Asterisms

[Grampa Don]

Ever heard of them? I hadn't until I became interested in astronomy a few years back. An asterism is a group of stars that resemble something. There are many of them and most have nicknames. The big and little dippers and the southern cross are the most familiar. Those are easy to see, but most require a telescope. Here are four nice ones that I have seen. The photos are from the internet. I don't have the equipment needed to capture them myself.

The 37 asterism. Yes, it's really out there.

The coathanger asterism

The owl asterism. This one takes a little more imagination. It's also called the ET cluster.

The stargate asterism. A very pretty triangle within a triangle. The name comes from a Buck Rogers TV series.

Like I said, there are a lot of them. But, in most cases you really have to use your imagination to see where the name came from. It's human nature to see patterns in things, and naming them makes it easier to refer to them. The owl, for instance, is also called NGC457, but owl is a lot easier to remember.

Don

 

[Pepper]

I love your interest in astronomy! Your various threads about it are so informative and beautiful!

 

[RadishRose]

Wow the firsst one jumped right out- a beautiful 37!

The hanger too, but not sure on he owl and lost on the last one.

This is fun!

 

[RadishRose]

Oh, I see the owl now in this shot-

Now I see the triangles here-

Cool beans!

 

[hollydolly]

Oh that reminds me Grampa Dom. I asked my daughter to take a picture of the stars atop her mountain, but I didn't know she'd just recently sold her very expensive photography equipment.... so sadly no photos from her place, until we go out again later this year and I can take some...

 

[Grampa Don]

I put off getting a telescope for many years. I figured that with our light pollution it would be a waste. Then my granddaughter came along and I thought maybe she would enjoy looking at the moon or something. So, I bought a little scope on Craig's list. It turned out I could see a lot more than I expected. Within a year, I bought two more scopes and traded the little one for another that was larger. I've spent many pleasant evenings out under the stars with them and learned a lot. It doesn't look like my granddaughter is going to be an astronomer, but I have shared some neat stuff with her and the rest of my family.

I posted this before, but here are my scopes now. The wooden mount for the black one is something I made.

Don

 

[Grampa Don]

If you have any interest in astronomy, check out NASA's astronomy picture of the day.

Don

 

[RadishRose]

Here is today's Nasa's pic of they dy-

Jupiter clouds.

 

[RadishRose]

1/11/20

NGC 602 and Beyond

 

[Grampa Don]

Maybe I should point out that this image is a composite of xray, infrared and visual images. Because our eyes can only see the visual spectrum, the xray and infrared are shifted to colors we can see. So, it wouldn't really look like this or be so colorful if you looked at it directly. But, it shows details that astronomers need to see to understand what's going on. A lot of astronomical photos are like this.

Don