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| The star chart shows the
eastern sky at 9:00 PM on December 28, 2002, the night of our star party.
Orion rises in the east about 6:30 PM, lying on his right side. About
5 1/2 hours later, he is standing up-right in the south, directly facing
us. About 5:30 AM, he begins setting is the west, lying on his left
side. Following Orion over the course of a night will show the rotation
of the sky very nicely. Orion’s prominent red giant, Betelgeuse,
is larger than the earth’s orbit.
M42, the Orion Nebula, is in the middle of Orion’s sword, a fuzzy patch visible to the naked eye. In a telescope of nearly any size, the Orion Nebula is truly one of the glories of the sky. About 1,500 light years away, it is an active area of star formation, a kind of stellar nursery. Saturn is well placed for viewing, nearly 50 deg above the horizon at 9:00 PM. Saturn is now a little more than 8 au (astronomical units, the earth-sun distance) from the earth, more than 700,000,000 miles away. The Crab Nebula, M1, is only about 35 arcminutes from Saturn. We’ll have a look. |
You can print a copy of this star chart so you can take it outside.
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