Saturday, 29 June 2013

15

The constellations: intro.
Before I give you the list of the actual constellations, it should be noted that not all stars in the sky are named, hence the need for the Greek alphabet, some constellations don't even have one named star in them, unlike Canis Major with the Sirius. It should also be noted that some constellations have more than twenty-four stars, hence some have Arabic numbers or letters from the Roman alphabet, or numbers in the professional circles, 61 cygni, and b Vulpeculae for example. The nameless stars can be noted through their position, color or their brightness, although caution should be used when applying the letters as the brightness equals a Greek letter was based on "inaccurate naked eye- observations"(page 13) , along with the fact that the brightness of the stars has also changed over time.

Also, the brightest star is not always the alpha. Which is indeed a complete contradiction to the previous statement that the the alpha is the name for the brightest star but when is understanding something nice and simple? The term 'lucida', Latin for "bright" or "shining", is coined to describe a star that is of the "exalted status". Basically. The best example is that the lucida of Canis Major is Sirius, which is coincidentally the alpha star also. But the lucida of Orion, the hunter, is Rigel, which is the Beta star.

The thing that should be brought to attention, is the term 'magnitude'. Which is used as a measure for the brightness of a star. The heart of it is this chap Hipparchus, divided the stars into six classes; 1st magnitude for the brightest, the betas were the 2nd magnitude, all the way down to the 6th magnitude which were the dimmest. The problem with the system is that there is no room for the brighter stars, when accurately measured these days, hence there are some stars that are zero magnitude, or indeed below in the minuses.
An exmaple would be of Sirius at -1.5, and the brightest planet is Venus, at -4, sometimes. (depending on its position in correlation to the sun and the distance it is from the earth at the time.)

The same can be said for the other end of the scale; that he didn't have a class for the stars that were to dim to be seen by the naked eye, hence the scale has gone up to the largest at 31 for objects that seen with the Hubble Space telescope. (7 and 8 are easily seen through a normal pair of binoculars, 10 and 11 are easy to see with a good telescope, and 21 is for the faint stars that can be seen in the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey.)

The technicallity of the magnitude scale, is down to the fact that the 1st magnitude stars are 'about' 2.512 times brighter than the 2nd magnitude stars. This is a geometric progression, where each magnitude is the 5th root of 100, 2.512 times by itelf 4 times. Meaning that a star of the 1st magnitude, when in comparison to one of the 6th magnitude, they differ by 2.512 to the power of 5, generally 100 times brighter.

Whereas if two stars are six magnitudes apart, one is around 250 times brighter, as there are six magnitudes the equation becomes 2.512 to the power of 6. Just as when calculating two stars that are 12 magnitudes apart, the equation becomes 2.512 to the power of 12.

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