"Why did not somebody teach me the constellations,
and make me at home in the starry heavens,
which are always overhead,
and which I don't know to this day?"
- Thomas Carlyle
"What's so amazing that keeps us stargazing,
and what do we think we might see?
Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection
The lovers, the dreamers, and me."
- The Muppet Movie, Kermit the Frog
"Man hath weaved out a net,
and this net throwne upon the Heavens,
and now they are his own."
- John Donne (1572-1631)
Visit the Sandburg Sky Poetry Web
page, including CSMS student-authored sky poems.
|
Sandburg Center for Sky Awareness
A Fairfax County Public Schools Planetarium
SEP | OCT | NOV | DEC | JAN | FEB |
MAR | APR | MAY | JUN | JUL | AUG
Constellation of the Month (CoM)
December
Printer-friendly version of December
CoM
FCPS
Starfinder - December
Medium Size
Southern Sky (70K,
628 x 870 pixels)
Northern Sky (41K,
630 x 872 pixels)
Full Size
Southern Sky (333K, 1250
x 1736 pixels)
Northern Sky (178K, 1250
x 1736 pixels)
The Pleiades (The Seven Sisters)
The Pleiades or Seven Sisters (Messier Object M45) is a famous open star
cluster found within the borders of Taurus, the Bull (FCPS Starfinder, No. 4, Southern Sky).
The group is 541 light
years away. All of the names of the Pleiades are Greek. Subaru is the Japanese word for the Pleiades.
Only six stars (out of several hundred!) in the Pleiades are easily
visible with the unaided eye. There are many stories about what happened
to the seventh one. In reality, the star called Celaeno is too dim to see
(just at the limit of human vision in terms of brightness). For more
information about the Pleiades, read the transcript of Small Eyes in the Night, the 29 January 2000
StarDate, the daily astronomy-related radio program produced by the
McDonald Observatory, University of Texas.
Associated Mythology - The Pleiades were the seven daughters of
Atlas, the Titan who holds up the sky. All but one married gods; she was
so ashamed, she hasn't shown her light since.
Aries, the Ram
Aries (AIR-ee-eez) is the first constellation of the Zodiac for birthdates from 21 March to 19 April.
Aries makes a small, flattened triangle located halfway between the bright
stars Aldebaran (Letter "H," Taurus, No. 4) and Alpheratz (Letter "R,"
Andromeda, No. 17).
Associated Mythology - The myth of the ram with the golden fleece
in which Jason and the Argonauts recover the golden fleece. Shape taken by
Jupiter to escape from Mount Olympus when it was invaded by the Titans.
Credits: CoM entries excerpted from Your Guide to
the Constellations, by Lowell L. Koontz, former Planetarium Teacher at
Edison High School, Fairfax County Public Schools.
Geoscience-Related Information Servers | Geosystems in FCPS
American
Meteorological Society DataStreme Project
|