Hobbies And Interests
Celestial Roadsign
Locate the constellation of Ursa Major while facing north at any time of the year and you will have found the single most valuable constellation in the sky for finding others. Within Ursa Major is the Big Dipper, the night sky's most familiar asterism-- a group of stars or individual stars that people look at and see a familiar pattern representing a shape or object. In the case of the Big Dipper, the seven stars that comprise it form the shape of a large ladle, complete with a handle and a bowl. This asterism is just a portion of Ursa Major, the Great Bear, with the handle as the animal's tail and the bowl as its body. Trace an imaginary line up through the two stars at the end of the "bowl" and you will come to Polaris, also known as the North Star. This is the last star in the handle of the much fainter Little Dipper, or Ursa Minor. Polaris is right next to the celestial North Pole---a point in space straight up from Earth's North Pole. By locating Polaris, you now know where north is and subsequently can identify each direction no matter where you are.
Using the Dipper
Use the Big Dipper in the springtime to locate and identify other prominent constellations. Continue your imaginary line through Polaris until you reach Cassiopeia, a constellation shaped like the letter "W." Draw a line through the two stars that compose that part of the Big Dipper's bowl next to the handle, but this time go downward. The first bright star you come to is Regulus in Leo the Lion. Look up from Regulus and you will realize that it forms the period on a backwards question mark. This is the asterism known as the Sickle and represents the head of the lion, with Regulus as the beast's heart. Go back to the Big Dipper and trace out an arc through the handle and away from the bowl. The brilliant star you come to on this curved path is Arcturus. It is the highlight of the constellation Bootes the Herdsman, which appears more to modern day observers like a large kite, with Arcturus at the bottom where the tail would attach.
Winter Map
Go outside on a moonless winter's night and find Orion the Hunter. Look in a southerly direction and identify Orion by its many bright stars. Orion has a rectangular shape with the brilliant star Betelgeuse forming the upper left-hand side and the luminous Rigel in the lower right. In the midst of this rectangle, notice three stars aligned in a row that form the hunter's "belt." Follow a line downwards through these three and you come to Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky at any time of the year, located in the constellation of Canis Major, the Big Dog. Follow a line in the opposite direction from Sirius through Orion's belt and you will notice a little off to the right of it the Hyades, a star cluster in a "V" shape that is the head of Taurus the Bull. A short distance past the Hyades is the Pleiades, another cluster of stars in the form of a small dipper. People constantly mistake the Pleiades for the Little Dipper, but now you know better.