Ursa Minor and Cassiopeia

        I have completed my one month study into the phases of the moon. I will now start to look at different constellations in the night sky. I will spend the next two months reporting what constellations I have been able to pick out. I will then compare and also aid my study with Stellarium.  Tonight I am going to start off with a constellation that should not be difficult to find. I am going to look for Ursa Minor which is commonly known as the little dipper. This should realistically be easy to find because one of the stars that make up this constellation is Polaris. Polaris is also known as the northern star. This star is easy to find because it is a bright star in the night sky and with the aid of a compass one can find it. This is the northern star. Once this star is found I will have found the little dipper.

Figures were obtained from Stellarium

        The diagrams that are above were reproduced by Stellarium. As once can see it can be difficult to see these constellations when there are so many stars in the night sky. It would be a wonderful world if the sky would highlight each of the constellations just like Stellarium does for us inexperienced stargazers.

Figures were obtained from Stellarium

         I was successful in finding Ursa Minor so I decided to see if I could locate Cassiopeia. Cassiopeia is to the right of Ursa Minor and looks like a sideways W.  I was able to spot both of these constellations on my last outing. The two diagrams above show what Cassiopeia looks likes. One would think that all of these stars that make up the constellations would be close to each other. However this is not the case they can be light years away from Earth. In Cassiopeia the closet star is 54.46 light years away and the star that is the furthest from Earth is at a distance of 613.08 light years. There are hundreds of light year differences between them.  Stay tuned for more constellation next week.