Summer Triangle: Aquila, Cygnus, and Lyra -2

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Following last week, I am going to write about three constellations belong to the Summer Triangle. Those who live in the northern hemisphere, find the Triangle tonight! Details of the Summer Triangle were on the last week’s posting look!

Cygnus: a flying swan follows the Milky Way

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Cygnus, the Swan, is a cross-shaped northern constellation that has a vertical axis known as the body of a swan. The Milky Way flows along the constellation.

Deneb, Alpha star of Cygnus (α Cygni) is a blue star, which brighter few thousand times than the Sun. Beta Cygni, the second brightest star of Cygnus, is Albireo and it is a double star. Even though Albireo looks like as a single star with the naked eye, two different stars are touching each other.head

↑  ↑ Albireo ,the beta of Cygnus, looks like a star in this picture.

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Zoomed Albireo contains two stars named beta 1 and beta 2.  ↑ ↑

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 ↑ This is the actual picture of Albireo.  ↑

Chi (χ) Cygni is a variable star that has the biggest changes of brightness from all the variable stars in the sky. χ Cyg changes its brightness from highest magnitude 3 to the lowest magnitude 11, and its period is 406.9 days. χ Cygni is hard to find even with a telescope, but some days, it is easy to find with the naked eye.

Variable star: stars that change brightness depend on the time.

In Greek mythology, like Aquila, Cygnus is Zeus, the god of gods, in transforming look. Zeus tries to seduce a beautiful queen of Sparta Leda; however, he worries of his jealous wife Hera and he turns into a swan when he goes to see her from the Mount Olympus. Leda accepts the love of Zeus and gives birth to four kids, and two boys are Castor and Pollux boys and girls are Clytemnestra and Helen. Castor and Pollux grow up as a great hero who protected Rome and Helen the Troy cause the Trojan War because of her beauty.

Meteor shower Kappa Cygnids and October Cygnids associated with the constellation Cygnus. Since both meteor showers are minor, up to three meteors are visible on peak, and Kappa Cygnids is on the peak on July 30.

Lyra: Lyre that lost its owner

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Vega is Alpha of the constellation Lyra (α Lyr), and the fourth brightest star of the sky.  The second brightest star of the constellation Lyra, β Lyr is a variable star that has a cycle of 13 days. Magnitude change is from 4.3 to 3.3, and bluish binary star is visible with a small telescope.

Binary stars: The two stars orbiting around a common center.

Delta (δ) Lyr is a double star by the blue-white star and the red colored star.  This double star is visible as two different stars with the naked eye. Epsilon (ε) known as the Double Double because it is a double star of a double star.

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Delta (δ) Lyr:  two stars are also visible from the picture on top of the Lyra paragraph.

In Greek mythology, the musical genius Orpheus is the owner of the lyre. After the death of Orpheus’s wife, Orpheus fell in deep sorrow and died while playing a sad music. Even though Lyre lost its owner, it kept playing beautiful music, and Zeus brought the Lyre up to the sky, so that everyone can remember his music forever.

Lyrid is a minor the meteor shower of the constellation Lyra, and up to 20 meteors are visible per hour.

Binary stars and variable stars were confusing to me. I will discuss more about these topics later 🙂 !  Next week’s posting will be the Winter Triangle or the upcoming major meteor shower. The BIGGEST meteor shower of the year is almost here!!! I am so excited ❤ Thank you for reading.

★☆ Have a starry night★☆

Summer Triangle: Aquila, Cygnus, and Lyra

Have you ever heard of the Summer Triangle?  the Constellation Aquila’s (the eagle) star Altair, Lyra’s Vega, and Cygnus’s Deneb are connected as a shape of a big triangle across the Milky Way. A triangle that connects three stars called “the Summer Triangle”. The Summer Triangle is easy to find since these three stars are all alpha stars, which means the brightest stars of the belonging constellations. Summer Triangle also used as a star locator as the one Polaris does. In 1950, the American writer Hans Augusto Rey and the British astronomer Sir Patrick Moore popularized the term ummer triangle”.

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How to find the Summer Triangle: The Lyra’s alpha star Vega is the brightest star of the Summer Triangle. it comes up first from the east, then Cygnus’s alpha Deneb comes next. Deneb is bright, but it is not bright as Vega. It is located at the bottom left of the Vega. Third, Aquila’s Altair rises. It is able to find from the lower right position of the Vega. It should go down more than where Deneb is.

For this week and the following week, I am going to introduce three constellations that are most visible during summer and a part of the Summer Triangle: Aquila (the Eagle), Cygnus (the Swan) and Lyra (the Lyre).

Aquila: Zeus transformed into an eagle for kidnapping Ganymede

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Aquila(Aql), the Eagle, has a shape of tilted crisscross. It shows an eagle’s head and its wings.

Altair means a flying eagle, and it is a brightest star of the constellation Aquila. It is the 13th brightest star in the sky. This star is 1.7 times bigger than the sun, and 11 times brighter than the sun. Altair’s rotating cycle is six to seven hours, which is very short compared to the sun’s rotation period, 25 days. Altair is 15 to 20% more oval than other stars due to the fast rotation rate.

Ming Zhao (University of Michigan), from Imaging the Surface of Altair, John D. Monnier et al, arXiv:0706.0867v2.

Ming Zhao (University of Michigan), from Imaging the Surface of Altair, John D. Monnier et al, arXiv:0706.0867v2.

β Aql (second brightest star of Aquila) is Alshain, and it means “the balance” in Arabic. γ Aql (gamma Aquila) calls Tarazed. These stars are visible with the naked eye. If you are having trouble with reading Greek letters in an astronomical way, this post will help you: https://lifeunderthestarlight.wordpress.com/2013/10/13/greek-letters-in-constellations/

The Abduction of Ganymede (ca. 1650), by Eustache Le Sueur

The Abduction of Ganymede (ca. 1650), by Eustache Le Sueur

In Greek mythology, the Eagle is transformed Zeus in order to kidnap a beautiful young man Ganymede. Because Hebe the Goddess of youth who usually served the gods as cup-bearer gave up her work, Zeus wanted to replace her spot with a beautiful human being. He transformed into an eagle and got on the ground to find his favorite person. In a mountain of Troy, Zeus found a beautiful prince Ganymede, who was looking after a flock of sheep, and kidnapped him. Afterward, Ganymede served as cup-bearer to the gods in Mount Olympus. Aquila in the sky is a shape of the eagle that Zeus transformed.

Aquila, the Eagle, has two meteor showers Epsilon Aquilids, and June Aquilids. Sad to say, these meteor showers are minor, which means not visible with the naked eye. These meteor showers require optical aid such as a telescope. Epsilon Aquilids occurs in May, and its peak is on May 19, and May 20. June Aquilids is in June and its peak is June 16 and June 17.

This is it for the Eagle. For next week, I will finish Cygnus (the Swan) and Lyra (the Lyre). Thank you for reading this post 🙂

 ★☆ Have a starry night! ★☆

Light Pollution: reduces ability of seeing stars

Since last posting, I have talked about the meteor showers. Sadly, I could not see any shooting stars last week it was cloudy and too many lights distracted my sight. I am glad that I got a question about the pollution from my blog visitor during this weekend. The question was “how does pollution affect the ability to see shooting stars?” Air pollution like smoke, dust, and water vapor could distract the path of the light and blocks view of our eye. Stargazers go higher place such as hills to reduce obstacles from the air. Not only air pollution, but also light pollution affects stargazing. Today’s topic is light pollution.

Nowadays, even the night bright like a daytime because colorful artificial lighting is everywhere. The bright lights help the people can be active at night and see the beautiful night scene. However, it gives is a lot of damage to a person’s health and life of animals and plants. Thus, too much extra artificial light that damage to human life and the nature, called light pollution. Astronomers call light pollution as a phenomenon of disappearing of stars because of air pollutants and artificial light. This is a map of light pollution during night in America.

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The bright light of the night bothers deep sleep and causes the secretion of hormones for the worse. In the case of birds, a glare that wraps the nest during the night makes birds cannot lay eggs. Also, migratory birds move in getting lost because of the night-lights of high buildings. Plants have been a victim of light pollution. Trees lined under a bright street light have a shorter lifespan.

Stars in the night sky of the city are mostly invisible because of the light pollution. The nature of the night sky has thousands of stars and the Milky Way that clearly visible to the eye. However, light pollution sends up unnecessary light into the sky, and this makes very difficult to observe dim stars, nebulae and galaxies. This chart shows how many stars and deep sky objects we can see depends on the level of light pollution.

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Though light is necessary for human life, having too much light is a waste of energy, and it threatens people and the lives of animals and plants. We should strive to turn off lights at night, and make a better environment that people, animals, and plants live happily together.

 This website http://www.jshine.net/astronomy/dark_sky/ is the website I use to find places to stargaze. I think it is very useful. You can map to the nearest place from you and get the address of the place. It shows how much light pollution the place has, and what part of the place is darker than other places.  White spot is the brightest spot and it gets dark.

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Since I was in Fullerton before I moved to SF, I tried to find a spot not colored with white. At first, I thought about going to Chino Hills, where has one level darker than what Fullerton has. But, my friend and I was like “Nah, it is too near. It will be same”. We looked for where is near Fullerton and freeways, and has less pollution. Can you see how Lake Elsinore meets all requirements? It has two levels darker than where we were, and close to the freeway. I definitely recommend this website to look for dark spots with less pollution.

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I hope this reference becomes famous since it is very useful for stargazing 🙂 Stargazers! Let’s turn off the unnecessary lights before we gaze the dark night sky. Thank you for reading this post 🙂

★☆ Have a starry night! ★☆