Whenever you gaze at the stars and constellations it’s easy to forget that you’re seeing a three-dimensional picture.
The constellations seem to be set against a black canvas for all of us to enjoy through the ages, but that’s simply not the case.
The stars that make up the constellations are all at varying distances from Earth, from 10s of light-years to thousands of light-years away. There’s no way you can travel in a spaceship to the constellation Orion or Ursa Major, so when you see remarkable alignments of stars, like the three stars in a row that make up Orion’s belt, you have to be even more impressed. I know I am.
Another wonderful accidental alignment of stars is the Winter Triangle. It’s a perfect equilateral triangle made up of three bright stars from three separate constellations. What are the chances of that?
It’s available in the southeast skies these chilly February evenings, and all three stars are bright enough to see even in light-polluted skies.
At the upper right-hand corner of the Winter Triangle is the super red giant star Betelgeuse, the second brightest star in Orion. In English, Betelgeuse roughly translates into “armpit of the great one.” That’s right, Betelgeuse marks Orion’s armpit. You can easily see that Betelgeuse has a distinct orange-reddish hue.
Astronomically, the star Betelgeuse is the biggest single thing you’ve ever seen. It’s a humongous star that pulsates in size like a giant celestial heart. In three years it goes from a diameter of more than 600 million miles to almost a billion miles in girth.
By comparison, our sun is a super wimpy star, less than a million miles in diameter. Our own Earth is less than 8,000 miles across.
One of these nights, sometime within the next million years, Betelgeuse is going to put on the ultimate fireworks show. It will explode as a colossal supernova that will be so bright that it may not be safe to look at, like a giant halogen beam attacking your optic nerves from 640 light-years away. It should be quite a show as Betelgeuse blows itself up, a fate that awaits all super giant stars.
The next star in the Winter Triangle is Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky and the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major, Orion’s big hunting dog. Sirius marks an eye on the big doggy’s head. As you can see in the diagram, it’s at the bottom of the Winter Triangle. Just use Orion’s three belt stars as a pointer down and to the right, and you’ll hit Sirius dead on.
Sirius is the brightest star in our night sky mainly because it’s so close, at least relatively. It’s a little more than eight light-years away, which equates to about 50 trillion miles. It’s a large star but nowhere near the size of the goliath Betelgeuse.
Sirius’s diameter is about two and a half times that of the sun and cranks out more than 25 times the light of our sun.
Sirius is a Greek name that translates to English as “the scorcher.” Way back when, many civilizations believed that when Sirius was close to the sun in the sky during the late summer, it actually teamed up with the sun to make for some really hot days.
The third star in the Winter Triangle is Procyon, the brightest star in the constellation Canis Minor, the little dog. To find it, simply look for the next brightest star you can see to the upper right of Sirius.
Procyon is a little farther away than the scorcher, about 11 light-years away. It’s a little larger than Sirius, with a diameter of a little more than 2 million miles. Procyon resides in one of the poorest excuses for a constellation that I know. About all there is to the Little Dog is Procyon and the fainter star Gomeisa, just above and a little to the right of Procyon.
At my star parties I often call Canis Minor the little wiener dog of the winter heavens.
That’s it, the Winter Triangle, three stars from three different constellations that physically have nothing to do with each other. Yet, from our view on Earth they form an absolutely perfect triangle. I consider all of us lucky and blessed to see it.
On a different subject, mark your calendar for this Friday in the early evening, because in the Everett area southwestern sky there’s going to be a heck of a celestial hugging between the new crescent moon and the bright planet Venus.
The planet named after the Roman goddess of love will almost be touching the moon, about 1 degree to the moon’s right. It will be absolutely spectacular, guaranteed.
Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis and author of the book, “Washington Starwatch,” available at bookstores and at his Web site www.lynchandthestars.com
The Everett Astronomical Society welcomes new members and puts on public star parties. The Web site is members.tripod.com/everett_astronomy.
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