-
Asked by TheyCallMeBen to Heather, Helen, Hugh, Jane, Julian on 14 Nov 2014.
Question: What is your favourite star constellation? Mine is the plough because it was the first one my dad showed me and the first one his dad showed him.
- Keywords:
-
Julian Onions answered on 14 Nov 2014:
My favourite is Orion. Its very easy to spot on winter nights.
It has a huge red giant star, Betelgeuse which may explode any time soon.
It also has a massive blue star which is very young
And it also has a big nebula where new stars are being born – so it has everything!
-
Heather Campbell answered on 15 Nov 2014:
My favourite is Cassiopeia, the large W shaped constellation. Its easy to spot and looks like someone has written it in the sky.
The 5 brightest stars, from left to right, are called Epsilon, Delta, Gamma, Alpha and Beta Cassiopeia. Epsilon is about 440 light years away and 2,500 times more luminous than our Sun. Delta is an eclipsing binary (2 stars) star which take about 460 days to orbit each other, and they are only about 99 light years away from us. Gamma is a blue star about 15 times the mass of our sun, about 40,000 times more luminous, and approximately about 610 light years away. Beta is the closest to us at about only 54.5 light years distant, and it changes in brightness, which we call a variable star. Alpha is an orange giant star approximately 228 light years away.
Cassiopeia is also the area of the sky to look at to see the Perseid meteor shower in August.
-
Helen Johnson answered on 16 Nov 2014:
I love the plough too! When I was little I often used to go into the back garden with my brother to look at the stars, and to look at planets through my dad’s telescope 🙂
I think my favourite is Orion, because it’s really easy to see that stars are actually all different colours. When I was in Chile I saw it upside down because I was below the Earth’s equator – that was very strange!!
Comments