APOD: Winter Hexagon Over Stagecoach Colorado (2011 Jan 03)

[APOD Robot]

Winter Hexagon Over Stagecoach Colorado

Explanation: If you can find Orion, you might be able to find the Winter Hexagon. The Winter Hexagon involves some of the brightest stars visible, together forming a large and easily found pattern in the winter sky of Earth's northern hemisphere. The stars involved can usually be identified even in the bright night skies of a big city, although here they appear over darker Stagecoach, Colorado, USA.. The six stars that compose the Winter Hexagon are Aldebaren, Capella, Castor (and Pollux), Procyon, Rigel, and Sirius. Here, the band of our Milky Way Galaxy runs through the center of the Winter Hexagon, while the Pleiades open star cluster is visible just above. The Winter Hexagon asterism engulfs several constellations including much of the iconic steppingstone Orion.

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[neufer]

http://asterisk.apod.com/vie ... 75#p139575

[owlice]

This lovely image first appeared on Asterisk here.

[León]

Click to view full size image

Click to view full size image

The annual meteor shower of the Quadrantids is expected to reach its maximum strength in the early morning hours before dawn

[bystander]

http://www.windows2universe.org/asteroi ... _sm.sp.gif
http://espanol.earthsky.org/wp-content/ ... _430sp.jpg
The annual meteor shower of the Quadrantids is expected to reach its maximum strength in the early morning hours before dawn

Not sure what this has to do with today's APOD, but for more information on tonight's meteor shower and tomorrow's partial solar eclipse, see: http://asterisk.apod.com/vie ... 31&t=22452

[neufer]

The annual meteor shower of the Quadrantids is expected to reach its maximum strength in the early morning hours before dawn

[size=140][Finnegans Wake 621.7][color=#FF0000] Send Arctur guiddus![/color][/size]

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[size=160]Quadrans Muralis, the mural quadrant[/size]

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<<Quadrans Muralis, the mural quadrant: A modern constellation created by the French astronomer Joseph Jerome le Francais de La Lande in 1795. The constellation represents the mural quadrant, an astronomical instrument that he and his nephew used to plot and observe stars.
Quadrans Muralis was created from stars found to the north of Bootes, the herdsmen
just behind the tail of the great bear of Ursa Major.
The constellation is no longer recognized by astronomers, but a meteor shower which peaks
at the beginning of January, known as the Quadrantids, is named after this constellation.>>

<<The Quadrantids are an easily visible January meteor shower. The radiant of this shower is an area inside the constellation Boötes. The name comes from Quadrans Muralis, an obsolete constellation that is now part of Boötes. It lies between the end of the handle of the Big Dipper and the quadrilateral of stars marking the head of the constellation Draco. Adolphe Quetelet of the Brussels Observatory discovered the shower in the 1830s, and shortly afterward it was noted by several other astronomers in Europe and America.

The peak intensity is exceedingly sharp: the meteor rates exceed one-half of their highest value for only about 8 hours (compared to two days for the August Perseids). This means that the stream of particles that produces this shower is narrow – and apparently deriving from and within the last 500 years from some orbiting body. The parent body of the Quadrantids was recently tentatively identified (in a paper by Peter Jenniskens) as the minor planet 2003 EH1, which in turn may be the same object as the comet C/1490 Y1 which was observed by Chinese, Japanese and Korean astronomers 500 years ago.>>

[Patrice]

Hello APOD team,
Just to know for curiosity: what is the font used in the labelled image with the star names?
thx.
Patrice.

[bystander]

Hello APOD team,
Just to know for curiosity: what is the font used in the labelled image with the star names?
thx.
Patrice.

You would need to contact the copyright holder:
Copyright: Jimmy Westlake (Colorado Mountain College)

[NoelC]

Just to know for curiosity: what is the font used in the labelled image with the star names?

WhatTheFont.com thinks it's similar to the Apple Chancery font, but there are things at the beginnings and ends of the words that imply either it's a variation, or that the original author added a little caligraphy of his own.





http://new.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/resu ... &imageid=0

-Noel