Week 1: Constellations

Objectives

By the end of this session, you will be able to

• Recognise the Big Dipper asterism in Ursa Major
• Find Polaris (The North Star) in Ursa Minor
• Find Cassiopiea
• Name some of the things you find in the solar system
• Use vocabuary like 'asterism', 'constellation', 'circumpolar' correctly

Web Links

The Constellations - Richard Dibon-Smith

This Web site lists all 88 of the standard constellations in an alphabetical table. When you follow a link to a constellation page, you get a description of the appearance of the constellation, a summary of the constellation mythology and a history of the name, and some details about the shape of the constellation and the types of stars and deep space objects in the area. Each constellation page has links to a simple chart (but in badly chosen colours) and a list of the brighter stars.

Constellations by Month

A listing of the constellations by the month of the year when they can be seen in the evening sky. Each constellation page has a clear and printable chart, together with summary information on the main objects in the constellation.

The Nine Planets

Absolutely amazing Web page that summarises information about the planets and their moons. Bill Arnett deserves a medal for this one! Start with the Overview.

xrefer

Gives access to OUP and other reference books. Check any words you need definitions for here!

Activity

Activity 1 deals with recognising some of the best known asterisms in the sky and on star charts. If we have a cloudy night at the Collingwood centre, we will work mainly with charts or a sky simulation. If it is a reasonably clear night, we will go out into the yard and find the Big Dipper on the sky.

Starcalc by Alexander Zavalishin is a nice freeware program for producing your own sky charts and constellation charts. You can export graphics files for Word using this program.

Keith Burnett
Last modified: 10th June 02