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| This chart shows the southern
sky at 9:30 PM on June 28, the night of our star party. This region
of sky is richly supplied with many interesting objects. Scorpius
is now all above the horizon, standing on his tail. Open clusters
M6 and M7 are located just left of the tail. Several globular clusters
are also in Scor-pius, M62, M19, M4, and M80.
Open clusters, perhaps a thousand or so, are scattered through the disc of our galaxy. The approximately 200 globular clusters found so far orbit our galactic disc in a kind of spherical shell. Scorpius also contains the red giant Antares, one of the largest stars known. Antares has a diameter as large as the orbit of Mars. If Antares were to change places with the earth’s sun, where would the earth be? And where would we be? Centaurus is nearly directly south this time of year. Omega Centauri, the largest globular cluster in the sky, is now about 12 deg above the horizon. This globular has about 1 million stars located in our galaxy about 28,000 light years away. At mag 3.7, this globular is visible to the naked eye in a decent sky. In the heart of Omega Centauri, the stars are only about 1/10 light year apart. Now consider the distance to the earth’s nearest star, Proxima Centauri, about 4 ly away. How much brighter would our night sky be if we lived in the heart of Omega Centauri? Would we get enough sleep? |
You can print a copy of this star chart so you can take it outside.
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