Leo
Observing >
A
lion lurks in the heavens. He is Leo, one of Hercules vanquished foes,
given a place of honor in the sky by storytellers thousands of years ago.
To find him, face south in the evening, and then look up about 75 degrees
- between halfway up and all the way up.
Leo’s most obvious features are his large head and mane, which appear
as a backwards question mark or sickle of stars. The bright triangle of
stars just to the left is the rest of the leonine body.
Leo, as you may know, is one of the thirteen zodiacal constellations (yes,
thirteen). To belong to this elite club one must reside on what is called,
in astro-parlance, the ecliptic.
The ecliptic is the imaginary line in the sky along which the sun travels
during the year. (Currently the sun is enjoying the passing company of
some fish in the zodiacal constellation Pisces.)
The planets and the Moon also hug tightly to this ring of constellations.
On the first couple days of May you can watch as our lunar sister passes
through the Lion, riding parallel to the ecliptic.
The bright star at the bottom of the sickle is Regulus. Just about every
culture who spent anytime studying and naming stars – Babylonians,
Indians, Persians, Greeks among them - gave Regulus a high and lofty name,
from Mighty to Center to Lion’s Heart. Even our name for it, Regulus,
is derived from the Latin “Rex,” or King.
And that bright star is oh! so typical of the visible stars in the sky.
It is big – about 4 times bigger than the sun – and bright –
about 200 “solar luminosities.” And Regulus, like most stars,
has little friend stars going around it.
The other fairly bright star of Leo, Denebola, can be found a little to
the “left” of Regulus. Its name derives from Dhanab al Asad,
Arabic for The Tail of the Lion.
And surprise! Denebola is bigger and brighter than the sun. And it, too,
has some gravitationally bound stellar companions.
The stars we see at night, including all those in Leo,
are all part of this great galaxy of ours – the Milky Way. But a
patient observer armed with a backyard telescope can pick out several
strange, faint, nebulous objects in the neighborhood of Regulus. These
are spiral and elliptical galaxies each with hundreds of billions of stars
of their own and all residing millions of light years away.
Although the pictures we see of these galaxies, from Hubble and other
observatories, are stunning in their complexity and form and beauty, what
our eyes are able to pick up is usually just a pleasant fuzzball in space.
Here’s an opportunity for you to see some of these celestial objects
yourself. Saturday, April 28th, is Astronomy Day. The Temecula Valley
Astronomers and my own club, FirstLight, will have about a dozen scopes
out and ready at Callaway Wineries in Temecula. It is a great annual event,
open to the public from 8-10PM, and a time in which we can share the night
sky with you and your family and friends.
If good weather prevails, we’ll have a stunning first quarter Moon,
a subdued Jupiter and Saturn, and all kinds of other cosmic gems including
Leo’s collection of jewels. And you can examine a variety of telescopes
there, as well.
Images of Leo, the ecliptic, and a map to Callaway can be found at firstlightastro.com.
Click on iColumn.
Until next time - or at Callaway - clear skies!
Like Leo, Mark Ritter’s most obvious features are his large head
and mane. He can be reached at ritter@firstlightastro.com.
Posted by Administrator at 2001.04.15 08:38 AM | Comments (0)
