Star Honor Series: Equipment

Screenshot from Stellarium program.

If you're doing a Star Honor class, here's a really great software program your kids can download onto their laptops and home computers. If you're looking for a good star/planetarium kind of software to help you find objects to look at through your telescope and to show the kids what stars and other objects are, let me highly recommend a free download called Stellarium. It's really an amazing little star-gazing program.

You can use this program to show your kids how to plan their star-gazing for each evening. By setting the time and the coordinates of the place you'll be setting up your telescopes and you can see what stars will be out that night. The thing tracks planets and even helps you find satellites and figures out when there will be meteor showers. 

Most of your kids know enough about computers to use the simple interface that Stellarium uses and it does come with a help utility that explains things.  If you can hook up your laptop to a projector, it also makes a great tool for showing your students where objects in the sky are. The projected image shows a very realistic night sky, just like the kids will be seeing when they go out with the telescopes. It will show you which direction in which to look for things you want to observe.

It's really a marvelous tool and best of all for your Pathfinder Club's budget - it's free!  You can't beat that with a stick!  Download it at:  http://www.stellarium.org/

Tom King
(c) 2015

Star Honor Series: Part 7 - Mounting Your Reflector Telescope on a Dobsononian Mount

In Part 5 and 6 of this series we built a Dobsonian Mount (right) and an unmounted reflector telescope. Now we get to put them together.   Here's what that process is going to look like.

First set the tilt box in the cradle on top of the pedestal. The mounting cradle should be lined with some kind of felt strips.  The pedestal is open under the tilt box which will allow the tilt box to sing all the way down so that the scope can point across a full range of motion from horizon to straight over head. 

Next, slide the tube into the open-ended tilt-pod mounting box. Move it back and forth so that it balances at the ears of the mounting box when the telescope is horizontal. If the scope feels loose, glue felt padding to the inside of the tilt box so the scope tube fits more tightly in the tilt-pod. The scope, if balanced properly should sit at any angle and rotate smoothly, without slipping once it's in place. that's really all there is to it. It should look like the picture below when you're done.  Finish by drilling a couple of holes through the top and bottom of the mount and through the scope. Measure the distance and drive a couple of screws through the holes to secure the scope. Be careful not to drive any screws through the optics inside the scope.

Setup: 

Next you need to collimate the telescope.  Adjust the primary mirror first by using the collimating screws on the bottom of the mirror mounting cell.  Look down the sonotube from the top the mirror and you'll see the image of the open end of the tube and your face looking back at you. You'll see the four spyder legs that hold the secondary mirror. criss-crossing the inside of the tube between you and the primary mirror. 

You want to center that image of the open top of the tube so that it will line up to give you a roughly centered image in the open telescope tube.  You do this by carefully loosening and tightening the screws below the primary mirror. If you force the screws you can crack your very expensive mirror.  

Once it looks close to centered, you need to adjust the secondary mirror to line up with the primary.  Look down the focuser tube. Further adjust the collimating screws until the secondary mirror is centered in the focuser tube. If you’ve got it right, your eye will appear in the center of the secondary mirror.

There are 3 screws through the primary
mounting plate which support the 
primary mirror as shown

Now, place the eyepiece in the focuser and test the optics by focusing on a distant object. You may need to fiddle with the collimating screws or the screws on the spyder legs of the secondary mirror. Once adjusted the telescope is ready for viewing. If you haven't mounted, the finder scope, it should be 90 degrees around the tube from the focuser, so that the finder is on top of the telescope tube. 
You'll need to line up the finder scope next.  It's best to do that in daylight. Roughly, line up the tube on a distant object and then look through the eyepiece with the lenses in place. Once you get centered on your target, check the lineup on the finder scope. Adjust the mounting screws so the cross-hairs on the finder line up precisely with your target.
Don't try to do this at night. Stars move and it's too hard to match the finder to the scope when the target is moving.

Be careful when you clean your lenses. Brush dust off the optics with a fine camel's hair brush or blower. Wiping your lenses with your shirt tail or even a hankie will scratch and dull lenses. 
Last Word: 

If you're building your own telescope, spend the bulk of your money on optics - a big mirror, eyepiece lenses and big focuser that will take 1 ¼ inch or 2 inch eyepieces. The larger lenses are way more comfortable for viewing and you can make your own eyepiece lenses. I made mine out of copper pipe and mounted the lenses in a PVC pipe cap slipped over a 2 inch pipe.  Works great and I got the lenses from an optical surplus. I got enough lenses to build 5 eyepieces for $25 and it came with the lens combinations for the various lenses packaged separately.

If you love star-watching, I highly recommend building your own telescope. It is a seriously cool project!

(c) 2015 by Tom King

Star Honor Series: Part 6 - Building a Reflector Telescope

John Dobson introduced his wonderful homemade low-cost, non-equatorial plywood telescope mount for large homemade reflector telescopes in the 1950s.  Telescope mounts can be as expensive as the telescopes themselves, if not more so. The simple Dobsonian mount was able to handle even relatively large telescopes is wonderfully cheap and works really well.

Having a cheap mount allows amateur astronomers to spend their money on larger, more expensive, high-quality scopes rather than on the mount. The design below is for a 10 inch “Dob” that will fit on the mount described in part 1 of this series. You can collect the parts for the scope on eBay and other online sites if you are patient. This can be a long term project for your Pathfinder club.

Here's what you need:

Materials:

Painted sonotubes.

• 12-inch tube about eight feet long. You can get a sonotube at a concrete supply store. They are used as forms for making concrete pillars.
• 10-inch telescope mirror
• 10-inch mirror mounting cell
• 10-inch Spider mount for the secondary mirror
• Secondary mirror
• 2 inch focuser
• Eyepiece
• 4 by 8 foot sheet of half inch plywood
• 1-inch screws, 1 box
• 2 old phonograph records
• 1 half inch carriage bolt, 3 inches long with nut and flat washer
• Felt strips

Tools:

• Drill and bits
• 2 inch drill hole saw bit
• Saber Saw
• Screwdrivers
• Scissors
• Wood glue

The Scope:

This will be a quick run-through of the process. You can find a more detailed description of the project with pictures and dimensions of things at this link to a blog of mine on another site. Here's a quick description of how to do this so you can get an idea of what all is involved.

Step 1

Cross section of mirror mount

Mount the telescope mirror first. It should come with a mirror-mounting cell that allows you to fix the mirror at the lower end of the you to adjust the angle of the mirror to line it up with the secondary mirror and eyepiece.  Follow the instructions that came with the cell.  Drill holes in the lower end of the Sonotube to match the mounting screws and screw the mount into the end of the tube.  Here's a more detailed description of the process. 

Step 2

Figure out the focal length of the mirror.  It will be in the specifications that come with your mirror.  Subtract 6 inches and the length of the focuser from the total focal length of the mirror. Measure from the center of the mirror up the side of the Sonotube.  Mark the side of the tube at the distance you computed above. Measure four more inches up the tube and cut off the rest of the Sonotube.  Hold the tube upside down while cutting so that the dust falls away from the mirror. 

Step 3

Mirror spider mount

Drill a 2-inch hole in the side of the tube at the mark you made on the side of the tube (the adjusted focal length).  Screw the spider mount for the secondary mirror so that the mounted mirror is directly below the 2-inch hole you just drilled.

Step 4

Screw the focuser assembly directly over the 2-inch hole in the tube. You will have to collimate (align) the optics so that the focuser lines up with the center of the secondary mirror. There should be detailed instructions that come with your optics for collimating the focuser. Once you've screwed down the focuser, put a low power eyepiece in the end of the focuser. Point the tube at something distinctive during the daylight and make sure you can focus on the object to make a sharp image. You may have to adjust the primary mirror a bit, but if you got the measurements right, it shouldn't take much. You also may have to adjust the angle of the main mirror to make sure the image is projected directly off the secondary mirror and through the secondary.

Step 5

Focuser

Next mount the finder scope a quarter of the way around the tube from where you mounted the focuser. You'll need to calibrate the finder scope during daylight so that the finder points at the same place in the sky that the telescope does. You can do this by pointing the scope at a small object a few hundred yards away and then lining up the finder scope to point it's crosshairs at the same object.  Your finder scope probably comes with instructions.

Now that you're done, the next thing we'll do is mount the tube in the Dobsonian Mount you built in Part 5 of this series. 

References:

Refracting finder scope

Here are some cool links to some other telescope building resources.

1. Mother Earth News: A Homemade Telescope 
2. Larry Brown: Homemade Astronomy
3. Scopemaking:  Plans for a Homemade Dobsonian Telescope
4. Howdy Ya Dewit:  A Homemade Telescope: A Quick Run-Through

© 2014 by Tom King 

Master Guide Secrets - Star Honor Part 5 - The Dobsonian Telescope Mount

Although not required by the basic Pathfinder Star Honor, building a telescope is a wonderful Pathfinder activity.  It can be a group project that adds a new and powerful telescope to the club's stockpile of equipment every time you do a star honor class.  If you treat the star honor like a real astronomy class, you'll not only get your Pathfinders a nice patch for their sash, but will encourage them to look up and see the stars which God has made. Some of the kids may even go on to make their own telescopes and pass their knowledge of the skies to the next generation of kids.

Having a nice big powerful telescope along on campouts gives kids something to do in the dark as well - at a time when kids tend to sneak off from the campsite to explore and get into mischief.  A row of telescopes acts as a magnet for restless minds, especially if you have a batch of interesting things to look at that will fire their imaginations.

First we're going to build the mount for the telescope.  The only part of the scope itself is the telescope tube. You'll have to decide what size mirror you are going to use first, select a mirror mount and measure the inside diameter of the tube.  You may want to go on to the second part of the series which I will have done hopefully next week and build the scope first.  I start with the mount first because it's inexpensive and gives you an idea how much you will have left in your budget to buy the lenses, mirrors, mounts and spotting scope - the heart of a good reflector telescope.

The design of this mount, designed by famous amateur astronomer, John Dobson, is simple, inexpensive to build and requires quite simple carpentry skills. It's made out of old LP records, plywood, some glue, felt and a couple of bolts. It's easy to use and comfortable to look through.

To look at the details of the design, follow this link to my Howdy Ya Dewit website.  Have fun. The design we will explore in these next three articles gives you a really fantastic telescope. I collected the parts for mine on eBay over several years of waiting interspersed by frantic bidding.  Someone gave me a six inch mirror and I now have the parts for a very nice six inch scope for under a hundred dollars total. You can't buy a scope of this quality for 5 times the price and it won't be half the fun to put together.

Master Guide Secrets - The Stars Part 4

Checking Out Scorpio

It's midsummer and Orion is pretty much invisible because it's on the daylight side of the Earth right now. But halfway around the sky you'll find Orion's nemesis a striking constellation visible in the south along the ecliptic (the sun's path through the sky) where all the other constellations of the zodiac are found.

Use this chart to find objects discussed below.

Scorpio.

Scorpio is one of the few constellations like the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper and the Southern Cross that actually looks a lot like its namesake. The long sweeping curved tail of the scorpion is clearly visible against the night sky throughout the summer. It looks like this:

Scorpio is Latin for scorpion, but not everyone sees a scorpion, probably because not every country has the nasty little critters. The Javanese people of Indonesia see a "brooded swan" (Banyakangrem) probably because Scorpio is higher in the sky and less "upside down.  In the islands of the South Pacific, which are also scorpion fee, it is also called Kalapa Doyong, meaning the "leaning coconut tree." In China the curved "tail" is part of a larger constellation called the "Azure Dragon".  In Hawaii, the distinctive hook-shaped arrangement of stars is known as Maui's fishhook after one of their demigods who was apparently partial to fresh-caught tuna.

Here's how Scorpio looks in mid-summer (without the red lines, of course)

It's easiest to see Scorpio in the summer.  In July you'll find it low in the southern sky at around 9 or 10 pm.  The constellation used to be bigger, but the Romans needed a sign of the zodiac for September, so they borrowed the "claws" of the Scorpion and designated the new constellation Libra. Most people still see the whole scorpion complete with claws, not realizing the Romans declawed it a couple of millennia ago.

The brightest stars in Scorpius include:

Antares & its companion

• Antares (α Sco) - Antares is a red supergiant, the 15^th or 16th brightest star in the sky depending on who you talk to.  It's magnitude is somewhere between 0.96 and 1.8. Antares is part of a binary system.  It has a faint supergiant companion star.  Antares is 883 times larger than our own sun. If you put Antares where the sun is, the surface would like somewhere in our asteroid belt.  Antares is 550 light years or 170 parsecs from the Earth.  It is 10,000 times brighter than the sun as well, so wear your shades if you plan to visit.

• β1 Sco (Graffias) - Beta Scorpii (β Sco, β Scorpii) is a multiple star system.  The Arabs called the star several names including Acrab, Akrab or Elacrab from the Arabic (العقرب‎) al-'Aqrab. In China it was known as 房宿四 (the Fourth Star of the Room).  Even with a small telescope you can see it as a binary star. This pair of stars (β1 and β2) are the most visible orbiting components in this system. β1 Scorpii, the brighter one is made up of β Sco A and β Sco B.  β Sco A is also a binary that can only be detected with a spectroscope.  β2 Scorpii meanwhile has two stars within it (β Sco C and β Sco E). β Sco E is also a binary that can only be detected with a spectroscope. There are six stars in the system. There used to be a D component, but the astronomers were wrong and they took it out, which is why there is no β Sco D and the names jump for β Sco C to β Sco E.  

• δ Sco (Dschubba) - It's name is from the Arabic jabhat, "forehead" (of the scorpion). It's also called Iclarcrau or Iclarkrav.  Whatever you call it, the star is at the forehead of the "scorpion" outline.  Dschubba or Delta Scorpii is unusual because it's near the ecliptic, so it is occasionally occulted (covered up) by the Moon and on rare occasions, by the planets. The sun covers it up as well, but you can't see that from here on Earth.  Delta Scorpii (δ Sco) is part of one of the closes "associations" of massive stars to the sun called the Upper Scorpius Subgroup (astronomers come up with such romantic names for things).  The USS contains thousands of young stars, kind of like Woodstock in the sky. It's magnitude changes because δ Sco has irregular outbursts that throw off luminous gases from its equatorial region. Like other stars in the region, it also has a companion that causes the star to flare up. Dschubba (δ Sco) has a second class B companion star that comes as close to it as Mercury does to our Sun. This companion star orbits δ Sco every 20 days in a wildly eccentric orbit that takes it close in about once in ten years. It also has a possible third and fourth companion star ranging out to about twice the distance from the main star

• θ Sco (Sargas) - Theta Scorpii (θ Sco, θ Scorpii) was named Sargas by the ancient Sumerians and more prosaically by the Chinese as 尾宿五 (Mandarin: wěi xiù wǔ) or the Fifth Star of the Tail.  Sargas is one of the brightest stars in the night sky, located about 300 light years (90 parsecs) from our sun.  Sargas is a bright yellow giant star, about 5.7 times larger than the Sun and 1834 times as bright. An F-type star, Sargas is yellow-white and rotates so rapidly it is thicker at the equator than at the poles. Sargas has the distinction of being one of the stars on the flag of Brazil.

• λ Sco (Shaula) - Lambda Scorpii (λ Sco, λ Scorpii) comes it at number 2 (after Antares) as the second brightest star in Scorpius.  It's name, Shaula, comes from the Arabic الشولاء al-šawlā´ meaning the raised tail.  Again the pragmatic Chinese just call it 尾宿八 meaning "the Eighth Star of the Tail".  Located 702.1 light years from Earth, Shaula is actually a triple system.  It has two B-type stars and a pre–main sequence star.  The primary star is a beta Cephei variable star meaning its brightness changes.  All three stars lie in the same orbital plane so they were probably all created at the same time. Shaula is also on the flag of Brazil.

• ν Sco (Jabbah) – If you live on a planet in the Jabbah system, you probably wouldn't get much sleep.  Nu Scorpii (ν Sco, 14 Scorpii) is at least a quintuple, if not a sextuple star system. Nu Scorpii A and B are the brightest pair, being both spectral type B2 subgiants. Nu Scorpii C and D are fainter spectral type B8 and B9 main sequence dwarf stars. Nu Scorpii A is a spectroscopic binary with faint B-type companion star. Like  Since it is near the ecliptic, Nu Scorpii, like Dschubba, can be occulted by the Moon and rarely by the odd planet. Mercury occulted it in 1821 and will again on December 2, 2031. Venus clipped Jabba in December 1852 and will do so again on December 30, 2095. Neptune occulted it in 1808.  Nu Scorpii also bounces light of a nearby nebula - IC 4592 giving it a nice blue color.  Jabbah or ν Sco is called 鍵閉 by the Chinese or Jiànbì, meaning Door Bolt – something to do with Chinese asterism.  

• π Sco (Iclil) - Pi Scorpii is a triple star located some 590 light-years (180 parsecs) from the Earth. German astronomer Johann Bayer gave it the name Pi Scorpii in 1603. No one is sure, but he may have been hungry at the time.  It was first discovered to be a spectroscopic binary with two hot blue-white B-type main sequence stars rotating around each other. These two ahve a third smaller star orbiting around them at a distance.  Pi Scorpii is also part of the USS (Upper Scorpius subgroup) of the Scorpius-Centaurus Association. Whether it is a voting member or not is unknown.

• σ Sco (Alniyat) Sigma Scorpii (σ Sco, σ Scorpii) - Al Niyat, one of the brighter members of Scorpio, is roughly 696 light years (214 parsecs) from earth.  The brightest component of the system is a spectroscopic binary, σ Scorpii A, an evolved giant star.  The binary has never been successfully resolved with a telescope, but has been identified with a spectroscope through changes in their combined spectrum. A is 18 times larger than the sun and radiates 20,000 times the luminosity. It's a variable star whose temperature and brightness varies significantly. The other member of the Al Niyat pair, σ Scorpii B, is a main sequence star that orbits at about four times the distance from the sun to Neptune.  A third member of the system, σ Scorpii C orbits even farther out taking a hundred years to complete an orbit. The final member, σ Scorpii D is a B9 dwarf star orbiting even farther out. The Al Niyat is also liley a part of the Upper Scorpius Subgroup. 

• U Scorpii (U Sco) -  U Sco is one of only 10 known stars that are recurring novae.  U Sco is located near the northern edge of Scorpio and normally has a relatively faint magnitude of 18.  In successive outbursts in 1863, 1906, 1936, 1979, 1987, 1999, and 2010, U Sco reached a magnitude of 8.  Scientist haven't been successful at predicting U Sco outbursts yet, but expect the next one to happen between 2018 and 2022.

Scorpio also has four deep space objects that were included in Charles Messier's early catalog of nebula and galaxies.  They were:

M4 (NGC 6121)

• M4 (NGC6121) – NGC 6121 is the nearest known globular cluster to the Sun.  Discovered by Philippe Loys de Chéseaux in 1746, M4 lies in Scorpio about 1.3° west of Antares.  If the sky is dark it can just barely be seen the naked eye if you have good eyesight.  Partially obscured by dust in the galactic plane it looks slightly red as a result.  It looks like a ball of stars with a unique central bar. The Hubble recently detected a planetary system within the cluster.

• M6 (NGC6405) – Called the Butterfly Cluster this open cluster of stars vaguely resembles a

  

  The Butterfly Cluster

  butterfly in shape. First officially observed by Giovanni Battista Hodierna in 1654, the Butterfly cluster may have been seen by 1st century astronomer Ptolemy with his unusually acute eyesight while he was busy discovering its neighbour, the Ptolemy Cluster. The cluster was cataloged #6 by Charles Messier and contains hot, blue B type stars and a notable K type orange giant star that's a semi-regular variable.  Astronomers estimate its distance as somewhere around 1,600 light years from Earth.  With a magnitude 4.2, the star should be easy to spot just  above and slightly to the left of the "stinger" of Scorpio's tail.

The Ptolemy Cluster

• M7 (NGC 6475) -  The Ptolemy Cluster, as it has been known since it was first observed by Roman astronomer Ptolemy in 130 AD, is an open cluster of stars, located just below M6 and to the left of the Stinger in Scorpio's tail.  Astronomers with telescopes have counted some 80 stars in the cluster.  M7 is 980 light years from Earth.

 

M80

• M80 (NGC6093) --  M80 is a globular cluster located midway between Antares and Graffias. Even with an a amateur telescope, you can see M80 as a mottled ball of light.  It contains several hundred thousand stars and is one of the denser globular clusters in the Milky Way Galaxy.  In 1860, a nova within the cluster briefly outshined the entire cluster. 

You'll notice that Scorpio is located near the center of that bright hazy band of stars that cuts across the night sky in summer. Those stars are closer in toward the center of our galaxy which is why the look all packed together. When you look toward Scorpio you are looking toward the hub of the galaxy. Earth sits about 2/3 of the way out from the center of the galaxy (28,000 light years to be sort of precise) and 20 light years above the galaxy's equatorial plane within the "Orion" spiral arm. It is called that because the stars that make up the Orion constellation are all within that arm of the Milky Way Galaxy.

Scorpio is one of the easiest of constellations to spot.  Along with The Big Dipper, Orion, Cassiopeia, The Little Dipper, Canis Major and Minor and Taurus the Bull, they are among the easiest constellations to identify.  Ahead in our series we'll share some tips on viewing the moon and we'll talk a little about some other standout astronomical objects you can find with a telescope or binoculars.  Also coming up we'll give you instructions on how to build a ginormous telescope of your own. 

Meanwhile, keep looking up!  Jesus is coming.


Tom King, Master Guide

For more information and Pathfinder Resources, check out the Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book
© 2013

Master Guide Secrets: The Stars – Part 3

Orion – Pathway to Home 

Hubble view of the Great Nebula in Orion

Dark heavy clouds came up, and clashed against each other. The atmosphere parted and rolled back; then we could look up through the open space in Orion, whence came the voice of God. The holy city will come down through that open space. - -Christian Experience and Teachings of Ellen G. White, page 111.

A lot of people have made fun of that passage as pure fantasy, objecting to the idea that there even is an “open space” in the great nebula. After all, astronomers haven’t found any such thing……………….

Shuffle forward a few years till the Hubble Space Telescope turned its eyes on Orion. 

“Packed into the center of this region are bright lights of the Trapezium stars, the four heftiest stars in the Orion Nebula. Ultraviolet light unleashed by these stars is carving a cavity in the nebula and disrupting the growth of hundreds of smaller stars. The dark speck near the bottom, right of the image is a silhouette of an edge-on disk encircling a young star. Another whitish-looking disk is visible near the bottom, left, just above the two bright stars. This disk is encased in a bubble of gas and dust.”  Hubblesite.org

The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics includes this notation under "Orion Nebula":

"Some of these collapsing stars can be particularly massive, and can emit large quantities of ionizing ultraviolet radiation. An example of this is seen with the Trapezium cluster. Over time the ultraviolet light from the massive stars at the center of the nebula will push away the surrounding gas and dust in a process called photo evaporation. This process is responsible for creating the interior cavity of the nebula, allowing the stars at the core to be viewed from Earth." -Source. See also Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Once when Joseph Bates was preaching he described the Great Nebula in Orion as one of the great wonders of God's creation.  After the sermon, Ellen White, who was present at the meeting,  approached Elder Bates and told him she had seen that very thing in vision and that she believed the light shining from the Great Nebula shone from heaven itself.

So Orion is, to Seventh-day Adventists, a special place. I always get a thrill in my heart whenever I locate the Great Nebula in my telescope.  Here’s how to find it.

Like last week’s constellation, the Big Dipper, Orion is one of the most distinctive constellations in the night sky.  Because it is close to the ecliptic (the apparent path of the Sun on the celestial sphere as seen from the Earth's center) Orion is visible in both the northern and southern hemispheres.

Located between the zodiac constellations Aries and Taurus and a bit south of them, Orion is a distinct four-sided box of very bright stars.  Unlike most constellations, Orion looks rather like the mythological character it is named after – Orion the hunter.  The stars trace the body of a great hunter with a shield, raised arm and a sword that hangs from a starry belt.   It is most visible in the Northern Hemisphere during the winter months and during the summer months in the Southern hemisphere. 

Orion and its neighboring constellations provide a wealth of celestial objects to look at.  Let’s start first with the stars that make up the constellation itself.  

Orion is very distinct against its background of stars

  

Meissa, located above the Orion quadrangle where the head would be, is actually a double star with an outlying brown dwarf companion star.  It is surrounded by a gas ring which may be the remnant of another companion that went supernova.  

At Orion’s right shoulder (your left) lies Betelguese (“BAY-tell-jewz”), a bright reddish-orange star. It’s that color because it has expanded and become a massive M-type supergiant star.  Having burned through most of its nuclear fuel, Betelguese will one day explode and become a supernova that will be so bright it will cast a shadow at night and be visible in the daytime for several weeks.  No one knows when this will happen.  It could happen eons from now or next week.  It may already have happened and the light just hasn’t quite reached us yet.  No one really knows. Betelgeuse is the eighth brightest star and second brightest in Orion.

Orion’s left shoulder  is marked by another of Orion’s stars that has given its name to a movie villain.  Bellatrix is a B-type blue giant and 27^th brightest star in the sky.  Though too small to go supernova, Bellatrix shines brightly thanks to its very high temperature. 

Two blue-white colored stars mark Orion’s feet.  The one on Orion’s left and our right is Rigel (Rye-jel), the sixth brightest star in the sky and brightest in Orion.  Rigel is actually a triple star system.  The primary star, Rigel A, is a blue-white supergiant.  Rigel B, it’s companion, is itself a spectroscopic binary star made up of two blue-white stars revolving around each other. You can see A and B in most backyard telescopes if you look closely.

 

Orion’s right foot (the lower left star of the rectangle) is is a less well know star (no movie villains have yet been named after it).  Saiph is about the same size and distance as Rigel, but its surface temperature causes it to emit more light in the ultraviolet range and so appears less bright than Rigel.  

The three stars lined up in a tidy row in the center of the quadrangle formed by Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, Rigel and Saiph mark Orion’s Belt distinctly.  These stars are named Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka. The astronomer who catalogued them, Johann Bayer named them alphabetically from left to right as you look at the constellation.  The belt lies nearly on top of the celestial equator.  

Through an Earth bound telescope the Orion Nebula looks like this.

If you look closely you’ll see the prize find of the Orion group.  What appear to be three dim stars hang down from the belt to form Orion’s sword.  The middle star appears kind of fuzzy. That’s because the middle star isn’t exactly a single star.  It is the Great Nebula in Orion.  There are other nebulae in the region including the distinctive Horsehead nebula.  All are well worth looking at, but the Great Nebula is the one Ellen White spoke about.  The great nebula looks like a small bright flower in an ordinary telescope.  The Hubble Space Telescope has produced an incredibly detailed series of pictures of the Great Nebula.  The Nebula is a great glowing cloud of gas and dust and baby stars.  It seems that the Orion Nebula is one of those places in the universe where brand-new stars are created.  Rather what one would expect the vicinity of  a portal to heaven to be like.

Orion As a Guidepost:

Like the Big Dipper, the constellation Orion can help you find your way to other bright stars and constellations. 

If you draw an arrow from Rigel to Betelgeuse and keep going, you’ll find your way to two bright stars – Castor and Pollux found in Gemini, the Twins. 

Draw a line through the 3 stars of the belt and go to your left and you will come to the brightest star in the night Sky – Sirius the Dog Star.  Sirius is the most noticeable star in the constellation Canis Major or the Big Dog.  If you draw a line from Bellatrix through Betelgeuse and keep going you’ll run into Procyon, the brightest star in Canis Minor (The Little Dog).  These two constellations are Orion’s hunting dogs.

Draw a line to your right through the three belt stars and you’ll come to a bright reddish star called Aldeberan, a red giant that marks the “eye of the bull” in the Constellation Taurus.  Aldeberan is the brightest of the stars in the open cluster that makes up Taurus.  There are five faint stars so close to Aldeberan that astronomers consider them companion stars.

If you keep going on from Taurus, you will you come to the most noticeable of the open star clusters – the Pleiades or Seven Sisters.  The constellation is quite distinct.  It looks like the picture to the left when you look at it with the naked eye.

With even a small telescope you can see a breath-taking jumble of stars if you turn it on the Pleiades.  The whole area is densely packed with stars and wispy nebulae. It’s guaranteed to get you a “pretty cool” from your Pathfinders when you show it to them.

The Pleiades close up

Like the Big Dipper, Orion sits in the middle of five easy-to-find constellations including:

• Orion itself
• Canis Major
• Canis Minor
• Taurus the Bull
• The Pleiades
  

The Horsehead Nebula

There are several fainter and harder to find constellations in or near Orion.  There’s Lepus the Hare, Eridanus the River, Monoceros the Unicorn and Fornax the Furnace. These are much harder to trace, but will give your kids some exercise with a star map if you'd like to teach your group how to use star maps.

You might want to cast around near the Great Nebula and see if you can spot the distinctive Horsehead Nebula.  You can find it just south of Alnitak, the most easterly star in Orion's belt.  It's made up of a swirling cloud of dark dust and gas set against a glowing backdrop.  The dark cloud looks just like a horse head sticking up out of a cloud. You can see it clearly in the photograph at the right.

If you consult a star chart you'll see other galaxies and nebulae marked with an "M" and a number.  These objects were originally identified and cataloged in the Messier Catalog.  Messier included pretty much all of the galaxies and nebula you can see with a small telescope in his catalog. There are many other nebulae, galaxies and star clusters that have been cataloged as telescopes have improved and given NGC (New General Catalog) numbers.

Take your time.

Set aside an entire night of star-gazing just for Orion and another for the Big Dipper and its companions.  As natural guideposts and very distinct constellations, these two constellations are the first ones you want to become familiar with if you're new to astronomy.

If you want to bone up on astronomy yourself there's a college introductory workbook and companion software called Red Shift that you can still find on Amazon and other places. It was written by the late Bill O. Walker (Bo Walker), former director of the Tyler Junior College Planetarium and an elder at the Tyler SDA Church in Tyler, Texas.  I've seen it on Amazon as a used book.  Bo was a friend of mine and I used to love to listen to him talk about the stars. I learned to love star gazing at Lone Star Camp as a staff member when Bo was our nature instructor.  We spent a lot of late nights with other staffers sitting out on the boat dock underneath a clear Texas sky, waiting till Orion finally came up over the eastern horizon.  I always look for him whenever the night sky is clear.

Tom