Winter is the best season for skygazing. Many people would tell “The stars shine brighter in winter” and that is true because there are more bright stars in the winter for the observers in northern hemisphere. (This post is for the ones who live in northern hemisphere.) We just had march equinox, which is considered as end of winter and shortly winter stars will become unobservable so before that I would like to give quick facts and guidelines for detecting bright stars of winter. Below is a picture of what you would see if you look at sky at nights towards south-west these days:
The single brightest constellation (group of stars) of any season is Orion, the Hunter. On any winter evening Orion can easily be spotted with its striking belt of three stars, so called Belt of Orion. Apart from its belt, Orion has two 1st-magnitude stars: blue-white Rigel and golden orange Betelgeuse. Rigel and Betelgeuse lie diagonally from each other, with the Belt of Orion between them. Betelgeuse is 640 light years away. You might remember it from the popular science fiction book “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, where main character “Ford Prefect” was from “a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse”.
Then there is Sirius, the brightest of all stars, star of stars! It is on the left of Orion’s Belt, which roughly points to it. Sirius is actually a binary stay system, 8.6 light years away from us. That means what you see is actually light emitted from Sirius 8.6 years ago. If you have a kid around 8-9 years old, by showing Sirius you can tell him / her that that light started its journey when he / she was born 🙂
At a similar distance from Belt of Orion as Sirius but in opposite direction, there is orange-gold Aldebaran. Aldebaran represents the face of Taurus, the Bull. If you look far up above Aldebaran you will see yellowish Capella. Its name is derived from the Latin “goat”. It is 42 light years away from us and it radius is 10 times our Sun.
If you look up above Sirius there is Procyon. The constellation of Sirius is Canis Major, the Big Dog, and Sirius is therefore often called the Dog Star. The constellation of Procyon is Canis Minor, the Little Dog, so Procyon is called the little Dog Star. It is 11 light years away from us. Above Procyon and Jupiter (it is a planet not a star), there are two very bright stars: Pollux and Castor. They are the head of the constellation Gemini, the Twins.
The stars are symbols of humanity’s top aspirations. There are only a few things in life as inspirational as observing Stars. I invite you all to the skygazing, the road of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton!
Hakan Erdogan 