Who Moved the Sky?

Or really, if it's anytime from Labor Day to Easter. That's because Bootes and Hercules and all their neighbors have gone south for the winter. The Big Dipper, The Little Dipper, and all their neighbors are year-round residents of the Arctic, the Circumpolar Constellations we talked about way back. There are only five of them left.

The good news is that there are stars all around us, in every direction you can look. So new constellations are showing up almost nightly. The reason for this was explained in part here, but just know that it's happening all the time — has been going on since time immemorial and will be going on long after we're here to watch it — so it's nothing to worry about.

The Big Dipper will still point you. Use the Pointer Sisters, but this time, go from the rim of the dipper to the bottom of the bowl and keep on going — but beware! Here there be lions!

Leo is one of the Zodiacal Constellations. If you were born in late July or early August, he's your sun sign. The signs of the zodiac are an exclusive club: no more and no less than twelve. But they didn't get there because they're all as beautiful as Leo. In fact, some, like Aries, are so non-descript they're not easy to find. They got to be special because they all sit on a line that traces the apparent path of the sun over the course of a year. Leo is chosen for midsummer's children, because once upon a time Leo was on the horizon where the sun was rising at that time of year. That this is no longer true is one of the dirty little secrets of astrology. The secret is called the Precession Of The Equinoxes, which, apart from being a great name for a band, is something we'll discuss when your older. Or you can look here, but don't say I didn't warn you. The best time for seeing Leo is toward spring, but if you have a flat view to the horizon, he's rising at midevening in January, or if you're a night owl, he's up over the hills, treetops, or houses by midnight-ish most of the winter.

Better during the winter months is to go with our other home base constellation, Orion. After the Big Dipper, most people consider Orion the most distinctive constellation, and what a beaut he is! Just look south.

Orion looks like an arrow in a box. In the lower right hand of the box is Rigel, the brightest star in the constellation, and the seventh-brightest star visible from Earth. Nobody likes a snitch, but to tell the truth, Rigel cheats: what we see as a single blue-white star is actually three stars. That's not to say Rigel has no bragging rights: its primary star is a blue giant that's more than 100,000 times brighter than our puny yellow Sun! Think of the sales of sunglasses! In the lower left of the box is Saiph, which is about 2,000 light years from Earth. That means that the light hitting your retina tonight left Saiph when Rome was at the height of its empire. In the upper left of the box is red Betelgeuse, which means "shoulder of Orion" (the Arabic astronomers called him Jauza), and is mispronounced by English-speakers (don't get me started) as "beetle juice" — and if you mention that silly movie, this conversation is over! Betelgeuse is the second brightest star in Orion and is the tenth brightest star visible from Earth. It's a red giant, very near the end of its career as a star. It's so bloated that if it were where our sun is, its outer rim would reach almost to Jupiter. People in ages hence will one night see it supernova. In the upper right of the box is Bellatrix, who has no opinion about Hogwarts. And that's just the box! The three bright stars in the middle, which form Orion's belt, are sisters to our own Sun. They were made about the same time as our own star and are what the Sun would look like from any planets that might be circling them. This doesn't even begin to exhaust the interesting things about Orion, but if I don't hit a line break for this paragraph, I'm going to get in trouble with the w3 Consortium.

Orion is a good home base in the winter, not only because it's such an arresting centerpiece of the winter sky, but because Rigel is one-sixth of a famous asterism known as The Winter Hexagon. The stars in this formation are some of the brightest and best known of stars visible from Earth, including, though it's not named in this picture, Sirius, which is the brightest star in the box (it's the star on the bottom of the hexagram, in Canis Major; it's the eye of one of Orion's hunting dogs, also known as the Dog Star and gave its name to the Dog Days of Summer). The other star left unnamed in the diagram is Capella, at the opposite end of the hexagram, in Auriga, which is number 6 on the bright star pop charts.

From any one of them, it's a matter of branching out, just like you did with the Big Dipper. So, as Peter Pan would say, "Second star to the right, and straight on till morning!" From this point, you're ready to go deeper into the night, and on to the Purple Series of this site. Safe travels!