Image source: Austin American-Statesman
Twenty years ago, we were busy with the STARS 2 group of teens at Lucio Middle School. Lots of fun times there, with meteor shower middle of the night adventures with Mr. Arteaga providing gorditas and juice while we waited for sunrise and parents picking up their excited teens. If you were part of that group, I hope you are still looking up.
What’s up? Oh, that is a great question to ask an astronomer because something always is. Look straight up to the zenith, facing south and look for the “Great Baseball Diamond in the Sky”, better known as Pegasus. The two stars on the right side will lead you to down to Fomalhaut, a bright 1st magnitude star low in the south. We RGV folks are fortunate to be able to see this star that is part of the constellation Pisces Austrinus, the Southern Fish. Folks living a bit farther north of our latitude don’t get to see it. It is almost solitary in the dark southern sky near the horizon and unofficially called the lonely star, which is also a fitting nickname for one that can be seen in the Lone Star state’s farthest southern point.
Watching the baseball playoffs is a good time to watch the motion of the Great Baseball Diamond in the Sky, better known as the Great Square of Pegasus. Almost directly overhead about 9:00 PM this week, to a stargazer facing south and craning their neck back almost 90 degrees, the view is definitely a sports field! Look to the upper left for the V sweep of Andromeda, the first baseman. And yes, Andromeda is a girl. Girls do play baseball quite well. Her parents, Queen Cassiopeia and King Cepheus, rulers of Ethiopia are proud of their daughter’s accomplishments and are gazing proudly at her attempts to put the runner out at first.
NO, that is not the way the Greeks tell the story; it’s the way I tell it. You can make up your own constellations and stories to share with your family too. That is how it all began anyway. Taking walks with the kids through your neighborhood in the dark fall evenings is a wonderful way to build memories to share – and it doesn’t cost anything.
If you are wondering where the Scorpion is now, look in the southwestern sky, because earth has moved along its orbital path so that at full dark the curving “S” of the summer star is moving out of sight, sinking into the western horizon before midnight. You can use it though to look above it for the elongated pentagon shape of Ophiuchus, the Physician. There is a string of stars to either side of the pentagon that represent a serpent that Ophiuchus has chopped in half.
If your site is dark enough you may be able to locate another famous constellation, the Physician, Ophiuchus that resembles a coffee percolator. To the right of Ophiuchus is a keystone shaped group of stars that may look like a flattened frog; this is Hercules. Although neither one of these characters were real, they are fun to imagine and locate in the skies. Do you ever think about the ancient cultures of what is now Iraq, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and the like, stargazing in the depths of night and naming the stars, while the ancient Greeks and Romans stylized these constellations?
Having an alphabet and a written language brought about monumental changes in the human experience. How wonderful it is to be a teacher, whether professionally or not, and enable others to build on that understanding of the cultures and lore of long-ago civilizations and think about how that line of communication continues today. I had so much joy being a teacher and I get excited when a former student comes up in a restaurant or grocery store, or the local gas station and asks if I remember them and then shares how much they enjoyed learning about the astronomy I shared with them with the “big balloon”. The school district’s portable planetarium that was bought with taxpayers money opened the universe to literally thousands of students and parents when I was able to share it at the local libraries for about twenty years.
If you are parents of Girl Scouts, and working on astronomy badges you might reach out to Stargazer for a troop activity that will help accumulate those badges. It might also be something of interest for a science fair project. Data collecting for solar motion, location of constellations during a few months observations, recording lunar phases might begin a lifetime career or hobby. One never knows what will pique the interest of curious minds.
Until next time, KLU.
