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APOD: Winter Hexagon Over Stagecoach Colorado (2011 Jan 03)
Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2011 5:06 am
by 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.
[/b]
Re: APOD: Winter Hexagon Over Stagecoach Colorado (2011 Jan
Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2011 5:19 am
by neufer
Re: APOD: Winter Hexagon Over Stagecoach Colorado (2011 Jan
Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2011 10:35 am
by owlice
This lovely image first appeared on Asterisk
here.
Re: APOD: Winter Hexagon Over Stagecoach Colorado (2011 Jan
Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2011 8:29 pm
by León
The annual meteor shower of the Quadrantids is expected to reach its maximum strength in the early morning hours before dawn
Re: APOD: Winter Hexagon Over Stagecoach Colorado (2011 Jan
Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2011 10:12 pm
by bystander
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
Quetelet's Quadrantids
Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2011 10:15 pm
by neufer
León wrote:
The annual meteor shower of the Quadrantids is expected to reach its maximum strength in the early morning hours before dawn
http://www.pa.msu.edu/people/horvatin/Astronomy_Facts/obsolete_pages/quadrans_muralis.htm wrote:
<<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.>>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrantids wrote:
<<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.>>
Re: APOD: Winter Hexagon Over Stagecoach Colorado (2011 Jan
Posted: Wed Jan 05, 2011 8:17 pm
by Patrice
Hello APOD team,
Just to know for curiosity: what is the font used in the labelled image with the star names?
thx.
Patrice.
Re: APOD: Winter Hexagon Over Stagecoach Colorado (2011 Jan
Posted: Wed Jan 05, 2011 8:31 pm
by bystander
Patrice wrote: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)
Re: APOD: Winter Hexagon Over Stagecoach Colorado (2011 Jan
Posted: Thu Jan 06, 2011 9:31 pm
by NoelC
Patrice wrote: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
