Which constellation is the largest in area. The largest constellation
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For a long time, man has been drawn to the stars. Looking at the starry sky and the movement of the stars, our ancestors mastered orienteering, learned how to measure the time, drew their calendars, when navigating as a compass, the ancestors used the stars in the sky. For convenient study of the stars, ancient people collected them in constellations.
Each constellation was given a name, which was taken from myths: the names of mythical creatures, gods, and so on. Number of constellations in the sky eighty eight in total... Of them forty eight were described by the ancient Greek mathematician and astronomer Claudius Ptolemywho lived back in eighty-seventh - one hundred and sixty-fifth years of our era. Since a long time ago the longest and largest constellation was considered the constellation Hydra or the Water Serpent... It got its name due to its resemblance to a writhing snake.
According to legend, the Greeks compared it with the Lernaean hydra and with the second feat of Hercules. It is actually considered the largest constellation in the catalog of the celestial picture. Its area is one thousand three hundred three square degrees. You cannot immediately find the constellation Hydra when you go outside and look at the stars in the sky. In support of what was said earlier about the size of this constellation, we recall that it begins in the northern hemisphere of the stellar firmament and ends in the southern one. It begins at the constellation Cancer and extends to the constellation Libra.
Hydra's visibility is limitedbecause it is located at the equator of the sky and does not rise high above the horizon. The best time and place for viewing it is from February to April from the territory of Russia from its southern regions, from other territories and at other times, the constellation of the Hydra is visible in pieces.
In clear weather in the sky you can see minimum one hundred thirty, maximum two hundred twenty nine stars of this large constellation Hydra. And although it is gigantic in size, it has only fourteen stars of bright glow, the most noticeable is Alphard (Alpha Hydra), its brightness is approximately two magnitudes.
The Arabs in ancient times called it "a lonely star in the serpent" because there are no brighter stars near it. One hundred and thirty light years separates us from this orange star. R Hydra also has a red giant - another star called a long-period one. It looks like the star of the World of Keith, only its brightness is equal to three magnitudes. More than a year, approximately three hundred eighty seven - three hundred ninety days, the period of the change in the brightness of this star lasts.
The most interesting feature of this constellation is the six stars that form the head of Hydra and are located near the constellation of Cancer, or rather below it.
Probably the Big Dipper is exactly the constellation from which the acquaintance with starry sky each of us (and for many, unfortunately, it ended there ...) We will start with this wonderful constellation. By the way, this is one of the largest constellations in area in our sky and the familiar "bucket" is only a part of it. Why did the ancient Greeks see this particular beast here? According to them, in the north stretched the huge country Arctic, inhabited only by bears. (In Greek, "arktos" means bear, hence "arctic" is the land of bears.) So it is not surprising that the images of bears adorn the northern part of the sky.
One of the ancient Greek legends tells about these constellations as follows:
Long ago, King Lycaon ruled in Arcadia. And he had a daughter - the beautiful Callisto. Even Zeus himself admired her beauty.
Secretly from his jealous wife, the goddess Hera, Zeus often met with his beloved and soon Callisto gave birth to a son, Arcade. The boy grew up quickly and soon became an excellent hunter.
But Hera learned about the love of Zeus and Callisto. In anger, she turned Callisto into a bear. Returning from hunting in the evening, Arkad saw a bear at home. Not knowing that it was his mother, he pulled the bowstring ... But Zeus was not in vain all-seeing and omnipotent - he grabbed the bear by the tail and carried it to the sky, where he left it in the form of the constellation Ursa Major. Only while he was carrying her, the bear's tail stretched out ...
Together with Callisto, Zeus transferred her beloved servant to the sky, turning it into a small constellation Ursa Minor. Arkad also remained in the sky as the constellation Bootes.
Now between the constellations Ursa Major and Bootes is located the constellation of the Hounds of the Dogs introduced by Jan Hevelius, which successfully blended into the ancient Greek myth - the hunter Bootes keeps the Hounds of the Dogs on a leash, ready to grab onto the huge Bear.
Big Dipper
The constellation Ursa Major is famous not only for the fact that with its help you can easily find the North Star in the sky, it has many interesting objects that are accessible for observation with simple amateur instruments.
Look at the middle star in the "handle" of the Big Dipper's bucket - ζ, this is one of the most famous double stars - Mizar and Alkor (these are Arabic names, like most star names, they translate as Horse and Rider). These stars in space are located quite far from each other (such pairs are called optical binaries), but the brighter star - Mizar - also appears in the telescope as a binary. This time the stars are really connected by gravitational forces (physical double star) and revolve around a common center of mass. The brighter star has a brightness of 2.4 m, 14 "from it is a companion - a star of 4 m. But that's not all - each of these stars is also double, only these pairs are so close that they cannot be separated into the largest telescopes and only spectral observations allow detecting duality (such stars are called spectroscopic binaries). So Mizar is a quadruple star (not counting Alcor). In one place we can observe examples of all types of binaries simultaneously.
Constellation Ursa Major. (hover over an object to see its photo)
And on the back of the Bear we can see a completely different pair - the galaxies M81 and M82. They are available for observation with small telescopes, but the most interesting details are only visible with instruments with a lens diameter of at least 150mm. M81 is a regular spiral, and the galaxy M82 to the north is one of the most beautiful representatives of the class of irregular galaxies. In the pictures, she looks as if torn apart by a monstrous explosion. True, such details cannot be seen visually, but the dark bar in the center of the galaxy is relatively easy to observe.
Two more nebulae can be seen in the same field of view of the telescope a little south of the "bottom of the ladle", not far from β Ursa Major - these are the galaxy M108 and the planetary nebula M97 "Owl".
Ursa Minor
Perhaps the only attraction of this small constellation is polar Star... Nowadays, it is located quite close to the pole - at a distance of just over 40 "(however, everything is relative, this distance is noticeably larger than the apparent diameter of the Moon.) in a hundred years the pole will begin to slowly move away from it. (you can read more about the precession)
The constellations Ursa Minor and the Dragon. (hover over an object to see its photo)
The Dragon
This constellation stretches out as a well-defined chain of stars around Ursa Minor. According to Greek legend, the Dragon is a monster killed by Hercules, guarding the entrance to the garden of the Hesperides.
One of the main attractions of the constellation is the planetary nebula "Cat's Eye" NGC6543. By the way, it is located in the direction of the ecliptic pole, 3000 light years from the Sun. Like most planetary nebulae, it is small in size but easily observable with average telescopes. Unfortunately, the spectacular details of the nebula that gave it its name can only be seen in photographs.
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Links
- (English). ianridpath.com. Retrieved September 19, 2012.
- (English). ianridpath.com. Retrieved September 19, 2012.
- (English). The RASC Calgary Center - The Constellations. Retrieved September 19, 2012.
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Universe records
The smallest constellation
The smallest constellation is the Southern Cross, which covers an area of \u200b\u200bthe sky of only 68.45 square degrees, which is equivalent to 0.166% of the entire area of \u200b\u200bthe sky. We find the first mentions of this constellation among European sailors of the 16th century who visited the southern hemisphere. Despite its small size, the Southern Cross is a very prominent constellation that has become a symbol southern hemisphere... It contains twenty stars brighter than magnitude 5.5. Three of the four stars that make up its cross are 1st magnitude stars. In the constellation of the Southern Cross is an open star cluster (Kappa of the Southern Cross, or the "Jewelry Box" cluster), which many observers consider one of the most beautiful in the sky.
The next smallest constellation in size (more precisely, occupying 87th place among all constellations) is the Lesser Horse. It covers 71.64 square degrees, i.e. 0.174% of the sky area.
The largest constellation
The largest of the 88 constellations in the sky is Hydra (in other words, the Water Serpent). The area of \u200b\u200bthe sky included in the constellation Hydra is 1302.84 square degrees, which is 3.16% of the entire area of \u200b\u200bthe sky. The next largest constellation is Virgo, which occupies 1294.43 square degrees. It is not surprising that the constellation Hydra got this name: it really is a long thin strip, stretching for a quarter heavenly circle... Most of the "snake body" lies south of celestial equator, and its total length is more than 100 °. In one of the legends, Hydra is represented as a multi-headed monster that Hercules killed.
Despite its size, Hydra doesn't really stand out in the sky. It is mostly composed of fairly faint stars and is not easy to find. The brightest star is Alphard, a second-magnitude orange giant about 130 light-years away.
The most massive black hole
The most massive black holes are found in the centers of galaxies. Among those black holes for which there is enough data to estimate their mass, the most massive one is almost certainly located in the giant elliptical galaxy M 87, belonging to the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies. Measurements made with the Hubble Space Telescope suggest that the supermassive black hole at the center of galaxy M 87 has a mass 3 billion times that of the Sun. Spectra from the Hubble Telescope show that the gas masses 60 light-years from the center of galaxy M 87 are rotating at 2 million kilometers per hour, and that the speed increases closer to the center. Only the gravity of a huge mass can keep the gas rotating at such speeds.
Recently, several new black holes have been discovered in terms of masses similar to that in the galaxy M 87. They are located in the centers of the elliptical galaxies NGC 4649 (constellation Virgo), IC 1459 (constellation Southern Pisces) and in the radio galaxy 3C 390.3 (constellation Draco ).
The brightest quasar
The brightest quasar (and the first one to be identified as a quasi-stellar object) is known by its number in the Third Cambridge Catalog of Radio Sources: 3C 273. The quasar itself is an object of about 13th magnitude, although, like many other quasars, its brightness changes periodically. Before the position of the quasar could be determined accurately enough (so that it became possible to identify it with an optical twin), the object was known as a strong radio source in the constellation Virgo. The identification was completed in 1962 when the Moon covered the quasar. The redshift of object 3C 273 turned out to be 0.158. The next brightest quasars have approximately 15th magnitude.
The brightest galaxy in the sky
The brightest galaxy in the sky is the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). It is located in the constellation Doradus and cannot be observed in the northern latitudes. Both the LMC and the Small Magellanic Cloud (MMO), which ranks second in brightness, look like separate parts of the Milky Way. The integrated visual magnitudes of the LMC and the IMO are 0 and 2, respectively. These two small galaxies are satellites of the Milky Way and are considered the closest to Solar system galaxies (after the dwarf galaxy in Sagittarius). However, the brightness of the Sagittarius dwarf cannot be determined, since this galaxy is in the process of merging with our Galaxy and its stars cannot be distinguished from many other stars within the Milky Way.
The oldest known planet
The distant globular cluster M4 is home to the oldest and most distant planet known. Formed 13 billion years ago and separated from Earth by 5600 light years, it is located towards the constellation Scorpio.
It revolves around a pair of stars - a helium white dwarf and a rapidly rotating neutron star. The history of the discovery of this planet dates back to 1988, when a pulsar named PSR B1620-26 was discovered in M4. The pulsar is a neutron star with a rotation speed of 100 revolutions per second, which regularly sends radio pulses. Soon after, a white dwarf was discovered due to its influence on a clock-like pulsar, as the two stars orbited each other twice a year. Astronomers later noticed other features of the pulsar, which gave rise to the assumption that there was a third object orbiting this pair. This putative object could be a planet, or a brown dwarf, or a low-mass star. Disputes about its true nature did not subside in the 90s of the last century.
In 2003, astronomers with the Hubble Space Telescope put an end to this debate by measuring the parameters of a white dwarf and using them to determine the properties of this third object. At only 2.5 times the mass of Jupiter, this object is too small to be a star - most likely it is a planet. It takes a year for this ancient planet to complete one revolution around the binary system.
Largest globular cluster
The largest known globular cluster is Omega Centauri (NGC 5139). It contains millions of stars, concentrated in a volume about 620 light-years across. The shape of the cluster is not quite spherical: it looks slightly flattened. In addition, Omega Centauri is also the brightest globular cluster in the sky, with a total magnitude of 3.6. It is 17,300 light years distant from us. The name of the cluster has the same form as the names of individual stars usually have. It was assigned to the cluster in ancient times, when, when observing with the naked eye, it was impossible to recognize the true nature of the object. Globular clusters are known to contain some of the oldest stars in the Galaxy. Omega Centauri is one of the oldest clusters. Therefore, many of its stars in their development have reached the stage of red giants.
The brightest new
The brightest nova observed in recent centuries (starting from the 17th century) was nova Eagle, which in 1918 had an apparent magnitude of -1.1. The next brightest is the new Perseus, which reached zero magnitude in 1901. The rate of detection of new ones during the 20th century makes it possible to estimate that new ones observed with the naked eye appear on average once every three years.
When a nova flares, the original binary increases in brightness by about 10 magnitudes, so the brightness of the nova is primarily determined by the initial brightness of the exploding star. When a new explosion occurs, the gas envelope is ejected, which expands for a long time and can be observed decades later.
The most distant cluster of galaxies
Can we look at the very beginning of the life of our universe? Answer: we can, since the light that came to us from the very beginning flew through the entire Universe, and the time it took for the light to reach us is equal to the age of the Universe. Therefore, by observing distant objects, we can find out what the universe looked like at the beginning of its life. Telescopes are, in a sense, "time gates". When observing distant galaxy clusters, one can see when and how these huge conglomerates of galaxies formed. Previously, the most distant cluster of galaxies recorded was a cluster with a redshift of 1.5, that is, it is located at a distance of nine billion light years. Recently, using X-ray images from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and other data, scientists have discovered a new, most distant cluster. The object, designated JKCS041, is shown in the picture above. The cluster's redshift is 1.9, which means that the cluster is one billion light-years away from the previous record holder. The hot gas glowing in X-rays suggests that we are not observing a random group of galaxies, but a real cluster. The picture shows the gas in blue. An X-ray image of the gas is superimposed on an optical image showing the stars in the foreground. We now see JKCS041 as the cluster was when the universe was only a quarter of its present age.
The brightest supernova
The star's explosion, cataloged as supernova SN 2006gy, can be seen in this wide-angle image (left) of the outburst galaxy NGC 1260, and an enlarged view of the region near the galactic nucleus (upper right). Indeed, when we consider that the distance to a supernova is about 240 million light years, its luminosity turns out to be much higher than that of all previously discovered supernovae, and it retained a high luminosity longer than other supernovae. The Chandra telescope observations, shown in the lower right picture, have determined the supernova's brightness in X-rays and can be considered as confirmation of the theory that SN 2006gy was explained by the explosion of a star, which has a mass more than a hundred times the mass of the Sun. Astronomers speculate that in such an exceptionally massive star, the formation of matter-antimatter pairs may be the cause of instability leading to the destruction of the star's core. In this case, after the explosion, unlike other outbursts of massive stars, there should be no neutron star or even a black hole. It is very interesting that the well-known extremely massive star Eta Carinae may well be the analogue of the star, the explosion of which was observed as a supernova SN 2006gy, in our Galaxy.
The windiest planet in the solar system
The highest wind speeds in the solar system were recorded on Neptune in the equatorial region of the planet. Large-scale atmospheric formations move from east to west at a speed of about 325 m / s relative to the planet's core, while smaller ones move almost twice as fast. This means that the velocities of flows near the equator of Neptune are approaching supersonic. The speed of sound in the atmosphere of Neptune is approximately 600 m / s. Strong winds are observed on all giant planets, but it is not clear why the fastest movement of the atmosphere is observed on Neptune. Perhaps this is due to the influence of the internal heat sources of Neptune. The second among the "windiest" planets is Saturn, where the maximum wind speeds are about half that of Neptune.
Largest galaxy
Galaxy 348, discovered a quarter of a century ago, was singled out from the vast class of formations faint in luminosity in the Metagalaxy, called the Markarian galaxy. But then the size of the galaxy was clearly underestimated. Later observations by American astronomers with a radio telescope located in Socorro, New Mexico, made it possible to establish its true size. The record holder has a diameter of 1.3 million light years, which is already 13 times the diameter of the Milky Way. It is 300 million light years distant from us.
The most famous comet
Observations of Halley's comet are traced back to 239 BC. No other comet has historical records that compare to Halley's comet. Halley's comet is unique: it has been observed 30 times over two thousand years. This is due to the fact that Halley's comet is much larger and more active than other periodic comets. The comet is named for Edmund Halley, who in 1705 understood the connection between several previous comet appearances and predicted its return in 1758-59. In 1986 g. spacecraft "Giotto" was able to image the nucleus of Halley's comet from a distance of only 10 thousand kilometers. It turned out that the core is 15 km long and 8 km wide.
Authors: Aerial Observatory G.P. Cooper, NASA
In a photograph taken in 1986 at the Air Observatory. G.P. Cooper, Halley's comet is depicted against the background of the disk of the Milky Way galaxy. The white spot in the center of the photo is Halley's comet.
The brightest planet in the solar system
Venus. Its maximum magnitude is -4.4. Venus comes closest to Earth and, moreover, most effectively reflects sunlightbecause the surface of the planet is covered by clouds. The top layers of Venus's clouds reflect 76% of the incident sunlight.
When Venus appears at its brightest, it is in the sickle phase. Venus's orbit lies closer to the Sun than the Earth's, so the disk of Venus is fully illuminated only when it is on the opposite side from the Sun. At this time, the distance to Venus is greatest, and its apparent diameter is the smallest.
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