Look North in November into the Dragon’s Lair

Click image for larger view. Remember: This chart is for about 90 minutes after sunset.  With each passing hour these stars will rotate counter clockwise around the Polaris, the North Star.  So Vega will appear to get lower as the night goes on and Capella will be getting higher. (Prepared from Starry Nights Pro screen shot.) 

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Our north sky map this month is covering a slightly larger area than normal because I want to capture the relationship between Vega and Capella – two of our northernmost guidepost stars – that anchor the north sky in November. Think of them as two cornerstones and a line drawn between them will go quite close to the North Star, Polaris. What’s more, Vega will help us find the head of Draco the Dragon.

Draco is one of the north sky’s more charming constellations, for its long, slithery form does call to mind a dragon. It’s quite easy to pick out, really, but you do need dark skies with little light pollution. Start by locating Vega. The four stars that mark the head of Draco – one is quite faint – will be found roughly halfway between Vega and the two bright stars that mark the end of the cup of the Little Dipper. Having located the head, you really need a chart handy to find the rest of this long, twisting, dragon body – but it is pretty easy, and once you identify it, you won’t forget it.

Draco also harbors a special treat for binocular and small telescope users. That faint star (Nu) that marks one corner of the Dragon’s head? It’s really two, perfectly matched, 4.9 magnitude stars that are far enough apart so they can be split with binoculars – assuming you have good eyes and a really steady hand. In a small telescope they are absolutely delightful and earn their nickname of Dragon’s Eyes. ( There are actually three neat double stars in this region that are a delight for the telescope user. I’ve written about them in the double star observing blog I share with my friend John Nanson.)

Meanwhile, to the east we have a bright half circle of asterisms we’ve been talking about in the previous months. Start with Capella and move on up to the “Bow” of Perseus and from there higher still to the “W” of Cassiopeia. Directly above the Pole you’ll find the “Home Plate” of Cepheus pointing down towards Polaris.

Look North in October 2014 – and find a really bright star!

Click image for larger view. (Prepared from Starry Nights Pro screen shot.)

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When I say “really bright,” I mean Capella – and I say it because so many folks assume, quite understandably, that the North Star will be the brightest in that section of the sky. It isn’t.

Capella is one of our brightest stars, and you may catch it this month just peeping up over the northeastern horizon about an hour and a half after sunset. And it is brilliant!  When you see Capella,  compare it with the North Star  and you will get a good idea of what the word magnitude means. There are a solid two magnitudes difference between the two – or if you want to get technical, Capella is magnitude 0 and Polaris is magnitude 2.

Yes, the magnitude system goes backwards – the lower the number, the brighter the star. Each magnitude difference represents a change of about 2.5 times in brightness. So a zero magnitude star is 2.5 times as bright as a first magnitude star – and 2.5 x 2.5, or 6.25 times as bright as Polaris, a second magnitude star. And while we’re on this subject, the faintest star in the Little Dipper – it’s over in one corner of the cup – is just about magnitude five. That means Capella is 100 times as bright as that star. (OK – if you actually do the math it doesn’t come out because I rounded off the difference – it’s really 2.512 for those wanting more precision.)

In fact, there is another interesting way to look at that star – at magnitude 4.9 it is almost exactly what our Sun would look like if it were placed just 32.5 light years away. At that distance our sun would be magnitude 4.8 – and that distance is the distance we use to compare stars. That is, to get an “absolute magnitude” for them so we can compare apples with apples,  we ask ourselves how bright a star would be if it were 32.5 light years from us.

And while we’re on the subject of magnitude, the Little Dipper does give us a great range. Polaris, as we said, is magnitude 2. The other bright star in the Little Dipper is magnitude 2 also – it’s at the end of the cup away from Polaris. Sharing that end is a magnitude 3 star, and these two are known as the “Guardians of the Pole” as they are prominent, close, and like other stars, circle around the pole  every 24 hours. Most of the other stars in the Little Dipper are magnitude 4, with the one star in the far corner of the cup being magnitude 5, as noted – well, actually 4.9. There’s a chart with these magnitudes in this post. Many people who live in light-polluted areas can see only three stars in the Little Dipper – Polaris and the two Guardians of the Pole.

How faint a star can you see? Depends upon your eye sight, the light pollution in your area, the transparency of the skies on any given night, how high the star is in the sky, and, of course, your vision and dark adaption. But as a general rule of thumb magnitude 6 has been accepted as the typical naked eye limit. However, if you live in a typically light polluted suburb you may see only to 4, or worse yet, magnitude 3. And observers on mountain tops with really clear skies reliably report seeing stars as faint as magnitude 8. All of this is with the naked eye. Add ordinary binoculars and you will certainly add three to five magnitudes to the faintest star you can see. In fact, you take a huge jump in the number of stars seen just by using binoculars with 50mm objective lenses. That’s why many amateur astronomers with fine telescopes also are likely to have a pair of 10X50 binoculars that they keep handy. I always did, but more recently I stumbled upon some very inexpensive Celestron 15X70 binoculars that I love for quick peaks, though they are two powerful and large to hold steady for serious observing.

For more serious work I now use relatively expensive 10X30 image stabilized binoculars. Yes, the 30mm means they do not gather nearly as much light as the 50mm standards – but the image stabilization means they take better advantage of the light they do gather. They’re also more compact and light, so I  don’t mind carrying them for several hours.

Capella will be a “look east” guide star next month, but you can get to know it this month as you look north. And if you live in mid-northern latitudes, it will become a most familiar site. In fact, where I live – about latitude 42°N – it is in the night sky at some time every night of the year. This is because it is so far north that as it circles Polaris, it only dips below the horizon for a few hours at a time.

Look north in July 2014 and take the measure of your skies and eyes!

Light pollution is a big issue these days. How does it impact you? Summer is a good time to check by looking north about two hours after sunset and seeing what stars you can see in and near the Little Dipper. Why summer? Because this is when the Little Dipper should be highest in your sky – standing upwards from Polaris, the North Star. Here’s what you should see on a typical July evening when you look north from mid-northern latitudes.

In summer the faint stars of the Little Dipper are high above the North Star. Click image for larger view. (Developed from Starry Nights Pro screen shot.)

For a printer-friendly version of this chart, click here.

The Big Dipper is diving downward in the northwest but is still very high, and its handy “pointers” should get you quickly to the North Star, Polaris. Roughly opposite the Big Dipper you should see the “W” of Cassiopeia starting to make its way upward in the northeast. And unless you suffer from really terrible light pollution, you should see the two “Guardians of the Pole” – the second and third magnitude stars that mark the end of the Little Dipper. The brighter of these two is just a tad dimmer than Polaris, but since it’s higher in the sky right now and thus shining through less air to get to you, it will probably look just the same as the North Star in brightness.

To do this test you first have to wait until it is genuinely dark, and in summer that’s a bit longer than in winter. Twilight actually is divided into three steps. We have civil twilight which goes from sunset until when the Sun is six degrees below the horizon. Nautical twilight is the next period, which continues until the Sun is 12 degrees below the horizon. Then you have Astronomical Twilight until the Sun is 18 degrees below the horizon. At that point it is as dark as it will get and will remain that dark until we run the sequence in reverse as the eastern horizon nears the Sun. As a rough rule of thumb, you can consider each twilight period to last half an hour – but the exact length depends on where you are on Earth and the time of year. If you want to get precise, go to the U.S. Naval Observatory site, fill in the form you’ll find there, and you can get a table that will give you the start and end of these twilight times – or for that matter when the Moon rises, or the Sun sets. It’s very handy. (Note: the preceding link takes you to a page for US cities and towns – but there’s a second page here where you can put in the latitude and longitude for any location in the world, including in the US. )

The second thing you need to do is make sure your eyes are dark adapted. They are casually reasonably well dark adapted after you have been out for 15 minutes and have not looked at any white lights. But it can take from half an hour to an hour of protecting your eyes from any white light for them to become fully dark adapted. That doesn’t mean you have to sit around in the dark doing nothing waiting for this to happen. In the last hour or so before full darkness there are plenty of things to see – just avoid bright lights. That also means moonlight. You’re going to want to do this when the Moon is not in the sky, for it will make it difficult to see faint objects anywhere near it. In July of 2014 the last two weeks should work pretty well for the evening hours – as will the first day or two of the month.  Other evenings, the Moon will dominate the early evening sky.   (A good Moon-phase calendar can be found here, though for this purpose I find the table from the Naval Observatory for local Moon rise is also handy!)

So here’s the test:

How many stars can you see in the Little Dipper?

Remember that in the magnitude system the higher the number, the fainter the star.

The Little Dipper consists of seven stars. Three are easy – Polaris and the two “Guardians” marked “21” and “30” on the chart below. If, once you are dark adapted, you can see only one of the “Guardians,” then your skies are limited to magnitude 2 stars and brighter – very poor. If you see both, but no other stars in the Little Dipper, then your limit is magnitude 3.

On our chart below, the magnitude of each star is listed as a whole number so as not to put decimal points on the chart because they might then be confused with faint stars! So when you see a star listed as “21” that means “magnitude 2.1.”

For a printer-friendly version of this chart, click here.

Even in good, dark skies the other four stars in the Little Dipper may not be that easy to see – and the faintest ones may require averted vision – that is, don’t look exactly where the star should be. Instead, look a little to one side or the other, and the star may pop into view. That’s because the center of your eyes are not as sensitive to faint light as the outer regions of your eyes.

Here’s another little trick that may help you locate these faint stars – use binoculars. With typical, hand-held binoculars you may be able to fit all four stars of the Little Dipper’s “cup” into the same field of view. If not, get the “Guardians” in your field of view, then move just a little to where the other two stars of the “cup” should be. This does not count, of course, for the light pollution test. For that test we’re trying to determine the faintest star you can see with the naked eye. But looking first at the stars with binoculars helps assure you that they really are there! You also can trace out the handle this way, though you will have to move your binoculars to do so.

If you can locate all the stars in the Little Dipper with your naked eye, you have very dark skies – congratulations. To see how good they are – and continue to test your eyesight and dark adaption – look for the stars marked “55” and “60” on our chart.

The star marked “60” is traditionally thought of as the faintest you can see with your naked eye. That’s a magnitude 6 star. In really pristine skies, such as those over Mauna Kea in Hawaii, experienced observers with excellent eyes can detect stars down to magnitude 8 with the naked eye. Personally, I’m happy when I can see all the stars in the Little Dipper and especially happy if I can get that “55” star – I’ve never seen the “60” one with my naked eye. But relative to the heavily light-polluted eastern seaboard of the US, I have dark skies.

This is not simply a good guide to light pollution in your area. It also is a handy guide to tell you just how good  – how “transparent” – the skies are on any given night – and to show you how well you have dark adapted at any given moment. So whenever I go out to observe I frequently glance at the Little Dipper to test both my developing night vision and the clarity of the skies. (It never fails to amaze me how much and how quickly my night vision changes. )

To the casual observer all clear nights are equal. But the experienced star gazer knows they are not, and the stars in and about the Little Dipper are a good guide, especially in the summer months when they are so high in the sky.

Look North in June 2014! See the ‘North Sky Triangle’ !

Click to enlarge. (Prepared from Starry Nights Pro screenshot.)

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Yep, that’s Deneb, the guide star that is the subject of our “Look East” Post for June, gracing our “Look North” chart as well. In fact, besides Polaris we have three key guide stars in our northern sky every June, each of which is noted for, among other things, just how far north it is.

Of the three, Capella may be the hardest to find, for it is very near the horizon in the northwest around sunset. But if you have a clear horizon in that direction, you should still pick it up, especially at the start of the month. More prominent, however, are Deneb and Vega. These stars play the key role in one of the best known sky triangles – the Summer Triangle, but that triangle becomes easier to see next month and it will be in the eastern sky. For June it is fun to link Deneb and Vega with Polaris in what we’ll call the North Sky Triangle – and the linkage has some special meaning.

We just happen to be lucky to be living in an era when we have a bright star near the North Celestial Pole – Polaris. There’s no such bright star near the South Celestial Pole, and in other eras there is none near the North Pole either. But in the distant past – and in the distant future – Deneb actually will be the bright star nearest the pole – not as near as Polaris, but still a good general guide to it.

That’s because the Earth wobbles as it spins on its axis in much the same way as a spinning top does. So the axis of the Earth doesn’t always point to the same place. It slowly makes a great circle around the northern sky, taking roughly 25,000 years to complete. Right now our axis is pointing to within a degree of Polaris. Not precise, but good enough so it is a ready indicator of true north. A mere 18,000 years ago Deneb was within 7 degrees of the pole and will be again around the year 9800!

This wobbling of the pole is really kind of mind boggling. I look at Polaris now, and it’s a bit short of 42 degrees above my northern horizon. But in a mere 14,000 years, Polaris will be almost straight over my head, and guess what will be the pole star then? Not Deneb, but its brighter – in our skies – companion, Vega. Of course none of us is likely to witness that event, but it’s still food for thought and gives us a sense of the majestic rhythms and time frame of the heavens.

And speaking of that time frame, as I write this it occurs to me that 14,000 years really feels like a very long time from now – while the 10-million-year age of Deneb doesn’t seem that long – and it isn’t, astronomically speaking. I’m not talking now about what your mind tells you about those numbers. I’m talking about your emotional reaction to them. I wonder if it’s similar to mine? This isn’t idle speculation. It’s central to our appreciating what we are seeing. But I think 14,000 sounds like a long time because it’s a number that fits into our day-to-day experience. Huge, but we can easily imagine 1,000 of something.  So imagining 14,000 of something comes easily to us. But few of us have any experience with one million. It would take about 11 days to count one million seconds and no one in his right mind is about to try it. So when we speak of the 10-million-year age of Deneb, or the five-billion-year age of the Sun, the numbers lose their emotional impact because they don’t relate easily to our experience. But 14,000 – well, we know, in an emotional sense, just how long that is!

Look North: May is the month the North Star gets two bright flankers!

Click for larger image. (Developed from Starry Nights Pro screen shot.)

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Is the North Star – Polaris – our brightest star? No! And it certainly won’t look that way this month as it shares the northern sky with two very bright stars. But, read on. Polaris is not nearly as dim as it looks!

If you have been learning your guidepost stars as they rise in the East, you won’t be surprised by the two bright stars which flank – and outshine – our pole star in May. To the northwest is Capella, a star we first met when it rose in the northeast in November. In May the northeast is dominated by a star that is almost Capella’s twin in brightness, Vega, a guidepost star we introduce in May. (See “Look East!” for more about Vega.) As a bonus we also have the twin guidepost stars, Castor and Pollux, making their way into the northern sky high above Capella. But let’s focus on Capella and Vega.

New star watchers frequently assume the North Star, Polaris, will be the brightest star in the sky. It isn’t even close! It is bright, but its fame comes because it’s very, very close to where the axis of the Earth points to the north celestial pole. So it serves anyone trying to find true north as a very good guide. But when it comes to brightness, it’s in the same league as the stars in the Big Dipper. Quite bright, but it can’t hold a candle to Capella and Vega. When you look at a list of the brightest stars, Vega is number 5 and Capella number 6. Polaris, our North Star, is number 48!

As simple as one, two, three!

That doesn’t mean Polaris is a slouch, though. First, in the eastern sky in May you meet Spica. (That’s on our chart for the east.) One distinction of Spica is that it’s as close to being magnitude 1 as any star gets. A distinction of Polaris is, as Spica defines magnitude 1, Polaris defines magnitude 2. (To be precise it’s magnitude 2.02.) Vega and Capella are extremely close to magnitude 0. Vega is 0.03 and Capella 0.08. Good luck on telling the difference! This month, if you look north 90 minutes after sunset, you may think Capella is a bit brighter actually – but if it appears that way it will be because it’s a bit higher in the sky and thus is not dimmed by having to fight its way through as much of our atmosphere as Vega is doing at the moment. So don’t try to split hairs. And yes, you’re right – they are NOT really as “simple as one, two, three” – on the magnitude scale they are as simple as zero, one, two – but that doesn’t sound as good! (Vega and Capella are zero; Spica is magnitude one, and Polaris, magnitude two.)

So which is really the brightest star of these four? Are you ready for this? Polaris! That’s right – if you put all four stars at the same distance, Polaris would appear to be the brightest. Remember, that the lower the magnitude number, the brighter the star. In absolute magnitude – the brightness we give to a star if they are all shining from the same distance  – these four stars line up this way:

• Polaris -3.4
• Spica -3.2
• Capella 0.1
• Vega 0.3

And those absolute magnitudes also reflect their order in distance from us.

• Polaris 433 light years
• Spica 250 light years
• Capella 45 light years
• Vega 25 light years

So sometimes a star is very bright because it’s – well, very bright. But sometimes it only appears to be very bright because it is very close to us. If you put our closest star into this group, our Sun – remember, it is just 8 light minutes from us – in absolute magnitude it would be by far the dimmest of this group – absolute magnitude 4.9! So while Polaris doesn’t look all that bright, it really is a very bright star! Another way to think about this is if you move our Sun out to where Polaris is, it would be about magnitude 10! You would need binoculars or a telescope to see it!

Click image for larger view of this chart. Yellow circle represents typical field of view for low power binoculars, such as 10X50.

To get an idea of the difference between Polaris and our Sun, point your binoculars towards Polaris.  You should be able to make out the “Engagement Ring” asterism – granted, a crude ring with Polaris as the diamond.  This asterism points you towards the true north celestial pole  – just avery short distance to the other side of Polaris –  and also gives you a good idea of about how far Polaris is from that pole.  Small binoculars will not show you the companion of Polaris, but to get an idea of how bright our Sun would be at the same distance, look for the star labelled 9.8 – and if you can’t see it, see if you can see the star that’s a bit brighter labelled “9.”  Don’t expect to see these instantly. Sit calmly, relax, and keep looking for at least a minute.

And here’s one more cool secret about Polaris. It has a companion that just happens to be quite dim – magnitude 9. It’s fun to see the two of them if you have a small telescope, though it’s not all that easy because Polaris is so much brighter than its companion. But if you get a chance to see Polaris and its companion in a telescope, remind yourself that the very faint companion is still a bit brighter than our Sun would look at this distance. This companion, known as Polaris B, was discovered in 1780 by William Herschel, and for many years Polaris was thought to be a binary star – that is, a system of two stars orbiting about a common center of gravity. But Polaris was holding one more surprise – it’s really a triple star.

The top image shows Polaris and its faint companion that can be seen in any decent backyard telescope. The bottom image shows the second companion, Polaris Ab, which has only been seen by using the Hubble Space Telescope.

This has been known for some time, but no one could see the third star until they turned the Hubble Space telescope on it in 2006. That’s when NASA released the first image of this third companion. The accompanying press release explained it this way:

By stretching the capabilities of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to the limit, astronomers have photographed the close companion of Polaris for the first time. They presented their findings  in a press conference at the 207th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington, D.C.

“The star we observed is so close to Polaris that we needed every available bit of Hubble’s resolution to see it,” said Smithsonian astronomer Nancy Evans (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics). The companion proved to be less than two-tenths of an arc second from Polaris — an incredibly tiny angle equivalent to the apparent diameter of a quarter located 19 miles away. At the system’s distance of 430 light years, that translates into a separation of about 2 billion miles.

“The brightness difference between the two stars made it even more difficult to resolve them,” stated Howard Bond of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). Polaris is a supergiant more than two thousand times brighter than the Sun, while its companion is a main-sequence star. “With Hubble, we’ve pulled the North Star’s companion out of the shadows and into the spotlight.”

So as I said, Polaris is no slouch. It not only is a very bright star, but it also has two companions, and scientists are still studying it because it is unusual in other respects. We’ll talk about those other differences another month.

Look North in January 2014 – an “engagement ring” points the way to the true celestial pole

About one hour after sunset, look north and you should see a sky similar to the one shown in our chart – assuming you live at mid-northern latitudes. The height of Polaris, the North Star, will be the same as your latitude. Polaris stays put. Everything else appears to rotate about it, so our view of all else changes in the course of the evening – and from night to night. It’s a good idea to check the north sky every time you observe to get a sense of how things are changing and to orient yourself.

Click image for larger view. Chart derived from Starry Nights Pro screen shot.

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Of course, Polaris – the “North Star” – is really not exactly north. It’s just a very good approximation of north. True north in the sky is the North Celestial Pole – a projection of the Earth’s north pole – and it would be too much to hope that a bright star would be parked on this exact spot. But if you have binoculars, point them at Polaris on a dark, clear night – one where there’s no interference from the Moon – and you should be able to see a neat little asterism called the “Engagement Ring,” a crude ring of 7th and 8th magnitude stars with Polaris forming the diamond. Look carefully and you’ll see this ring tells you the direction and distance to the true north celestial pole.

The North Celestial Pole is to the north of Polaris (arrow), and the Engagement Ring asterism extends to the south of it. You can use the diameter of the Engagement ring as a rough guide as to how far away – in the opposite direction – the North Celestial Pole is from Polaris. Field of view here is about 4.5 degrees as seen with 15X70 binoculars. Lower power binoculars will show a larger field. Click for larger image. (Prepared from Starry Nights Pro screen shot.)

Of course, Polaris, as with the other stars, appears to travel in a great circle around the pole. (I say “appears” because it is the Earth that is rotating, not the stars.) But, the relationship between the Engagement Ring, Polaris, and the true North Celestial Pole, remains the same, and south is defined as the direction away from the pole, north the direction towards the pole, and west is the direction the stars appear to rotate. For more on finding directions in the night sky, see this post. See the movie below, made with Starry Nights Pro software, to see how Polaris and the Engagement Ring rotate around the celestial north pole in the course of 24 hours.

High above Polaris the familiar “W” of Cassiopeia has completed its transition to an “M” as its stars roll around the pole. Off to the northwest near the horizon we see two bright guidepost stars, Vega and Deneb. To the northeast we have brilliant Capella.

The Big Dipper is easy to spot because it’s stars are bright. But folks frequently have trouble with the Little Dipper  and that’s no surprise because many of its stars are faint.  So don’t be alarmed if you can’t pick out most of the Little Dipper stars – four of them are fourth magnitude or fainter and besides, they are below Polaris this month, making them even more difficult to see since you are looking through more atmosphere when stars are low. I see them only when it has become fully dark – about 90 minutes after sunset – and when my eyes have had 10-20 minutes to dark adapt.

Look North in October 2013 – and find a really bright star!

Click image for larger view. (Prepared from Starry Nights Pro screen shot.)

For a printer-friendly version of this chart, click here.

When I say “really bright,” I mean Capella – and I say it because so many folks assume, quite understandably, that the North Star will be the brightest in that section of the sky. It isn’t.

Capella is one of our brightest stars, and you may catch it this month just peeping up over the northeastern horizon about an hour and a half after sunset. And it is brilliant!  When you see Capella,  compare it with the North Star  and you will get a good idea of what the word magnitude means. There are a solid two magnitudes difference between the two – or if you want to get technical, Capella is magnitude 0 and Polaris is magnitude 2.

Yes, the magnitude system goes backwards – the lower the number, the brighter the star. Each magnitude difference represents a change of about 2.5 times in brightness. So a zero magnitude star is 2.5 times as bright as a first magnitude star – and 2.5 x 2.5, or 6.25 times as bright as Polaris, a second magnitude star. And while we’re on this subject, the faintest star in the Little Dipper – it’s over in one corner of the cup – is just about magnitude five. That means Capella is 100 times as bright as that star. (OK – if you actually do the math it doesn’t come out because I rounded off the difference – it’s really 2.512 for those wanting more precision.)

In fact, there is another interesting way to look at that star – at magnitude 4.9 it is almost exactly what our Sun would look like if it were placed just 32.5 light years away. At that distance our sun would be magnitude 4.8 – and that distance is the distance we use to compare stars. That is, to get an “absolute magnitude” for them so we can compare apples with apples,  we ask ourselves how bright a star would be if it were 32.5 light years from us.

And while we’re on the subject of magnitude, the Little Dipper does give us a great range. Polaris, as we said, is magnitude 2. The other bright star in the Little Dipper is magnitude 2 also – it’s at the end of the cup away from Polaris. Sharing that end is a magnitude 3 star, and these two are known as the “Guardians of the Pole” as they are prominent, close, and like other stars, circle around the pole  every 24 hours. Most of the other stars in the Little Dipper are magnitude 4, with the one star in the corner of the cup being magnitude 5, as noted – well, actually 4.9. There’s a chart with these magnitudes in this post. Many people who live in light-polluted areas can see only three stars in the Little Dipper – Polaris and the two Guardians of the Pole.

How faint a star can you see? Depends upon your eye sight, the light pollution in your area, the transparency of the skies on any given night, how high the star is in the sky, and, of course, your vision and dark adaption. But as a general rule of thumb magnitude 6 has been accepted as the typical naked eye limit. However, if you live in a typically light polluted suburb you may see only to 4, or worse yet, magnitude 3. And observers on mountain tops with really clear skies reliably report seeing stars as faint as magnitude 8. All of this is with the naked eye. Add ordinary binoculars and you will certainly add three to five magnitudes to the faintest star you can see. In fact, you take a huge jump in the number of stars seen just by using binoculars with 50mm objective lenses. That’s why many amateur astronomers with fine telescopes also are likely to have a pair of 10X50 binoculars that they keep handy. I always did, but more recently I stumbled upon some very inexpensive Celestron 15X70 binoculars that I love for quick peaks, though they are two powerful and large to hold steady for serious observing.

Capella will be a “look east” guide star next month, but you can get to know it this month as you look north. And if you live in mid-northern latitudes, it will become a most familiar site. In fact, where I live – about latitude 42°N – it is in the night sky at some time every night of the year. This is because it is so far north that as it circles Polaris, it only dips below the horizon for a few hours at a time.

Look north in July 2013 and take the measure of your skies and eyes!

Light pollution is a big issue these days. How does it impact you? Summer is a good time to check by looking north about two hours after sunset and seeing what stars you can see in and near the Little Dipper. Why summer? Because this is when the Little Dipper should be highest in your sky – standing upwards from Polaris, the North Star. Here’s what you should see on a typical July evening when you look north from mid-northern latitudes.

In summer the faint stars of the Little Dipper are high above the North Star. Click image for larger view. (Derived from Starry Nights Pro screen shot.)

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The Big Dipper is diving downward in the northwest but is still very high, and its handy “pointers” should get you quickly to the North Star, Polaris. Roughly opposite the Big Dipper you should see the “W” of Cassiopeia starting to make its way upward in the northeast. And unless you suffer from really terrible light pollution, you should see the two “Guardians of the Pole” – the second and third magnitude stars that mark the end of the Little Dipper. The brighter of these two is just a tad dimmer than Polaris, but since it’s higher in the sky right now and thus shining through less air to get to you, it will probably look just the same as the North Star in brightness.

To do this test you first have to wait until it is genuinely dark, and in summer that’s a bit longer than in winter. Twilight actually is divided into three steps. We have civil twilight which goes from sunset until when the Sun is six degrees below the horizon. Nautical twilight is the next period, which continues until the Sun is 12 degrees below the horizon. Then you have Astronomical Twilight until the Sun is 18 degrees below the horizon. At that point it is as dark as it will get and will remain that dark until we run the sequence in reverse as the eastern horizon nears the Sun. As a rough rule of thumb, you can consider each twilight period to last half an hour – but the exact length depends on where you are on Earth and the time of year. If you want to get precise, go to the U.S. Naval Observatory site, fill in the form you’ll find there, and you can get a table that will give you the start and end of these twilight times – or for that matter when the Moon rises, or the Sun sets. It’s very handy. (Note: the preceding link takes you to a page for US cities and towns – but there’s a second page here where you can put in the latitude and longitude for any location in the world, including in the US. )

The second thing you need to do is make sure your eyes are dark adapted. They are casually dark adapted after you have been out for 15 minutes and have not looked at any white lights. But it can take from half an hour to an hour of protecting your eyes from any white light for them to become fully dark adapted. That doesn’t mean you have to sit around in the dark doing nothing waiting for this to happen. In the last hour or so before full darkness there are plenty of things to see – just avoid bright lights. That also means moonlight. You’re going to want to do this when the Moon is not in the sky, for it will make it difficult to see faint objects anywhere near it. In July of 2013 the first two weeks should work pretty well – as will the last four or five days of the month.  Other evenings, the Moon will dominate the early evening sky.   (A good Moon-phase calendar can be found here, though for this purpose I find the table from the Naval Observatory for local Moon rise is also handy!)

So here’s the test:

How many stars can you see in the Little Dipper?

Remember that in the magnitude system the higher the number, the fainter the star.

The Little Dipper consists of seven stars. Three are easy – Polaris and the two “Guardians” marked “21” and “30” on the chart below. If, once you are dark adapted, you can see only one of the “Guardians,” then your skies are limited to magnitude 2 stars and brighter – very poor. If you see both, but no other stars in the Little Dipper, then your limit is magnitude 3.

On our chart below, the magnitude of each star is listed as a whole number so as not to put decimal points on the chart because they might then be confused with faint stars! So when you see a star listed as “21” that means “magnitude 2.1.”

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Even in good, dark skies the other four stars in the Little Dipper may not be that easy to see – and the faintest ones may require averted vision – that is, don’t look exactly where the star should be. Instead, look a little to one side or the other, and the star may pop into view. That’s because the center of your eyes are not as sensitive to faint light as the outer regions of your eyes.

Here’s another little trick that may help you locate these faint stars – use binoculars. With typical, hand-held binoculars you may be able to fit all four stars of the Little Dipper’s “cup” into the same field of view. If not, get the “Guardians” in your field of view, then move just a little to where the other two stars of the “cup” should be. This does not count, of course, for the light pollution test. For that test we’re trying to determine the faintest star you can see with the naked eye. But looking first at the stars with binoculars helps assure you that they really are there! You also can trace out the handle this way, though you will have to move your binoculars to do so.

If you can locate all the stars in the Little Dipper with your naked eye, you have very dark skies – congratulations. To see how good they are – and continue to test your eyesight and dark adaption – look for the stars marked “55” and “60” on our chart.

The star marked “60” is traditionally thought of as the faintest you can see with your naked eye. That’s a magnitude 6 star. In really pristine skies, such as those over Mauna Kea in Hawaii, experienced observers with excellent eyes can detect stars down to magnitude 8 with the naked eye. Personally, I’m happy when I can see all the stars in the Little Dipper and especially happy if I can get that “55” star – I’ve never seen the “60” one with my naked eye. But relative to the heavily light-polluted eastern seaboard of the US, I have dark skies.

This is not simply a good guide to light pollution in your area. It also is a handy guide to tell you just how good  – how “transparent” – the skies are on any given night – and to show you how well you have dark adapted at any given moment. So whenever I go out to observe I frequently glance at the Little Dipper to test both my developing night vision and the clarity of the skies. (It never fails to amaze me how much and how quickly my night vision changes. )

To the casual observer all clear nights are equal. But the experienced star gazer knows they are not, and the stars in and about the Little Dipper are a good guide, especially in the summer months when they are so high in the sky.

Look North: May is the month Polaris ( the North Star) gets two bright flankers!

Click for larger image. (Developed from Starry Nights Pro screen shot.)

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Is the North Star – Polaris – our brightest star? No! And it certainly won’t look that way this month as it shares the northern sky with two very bright stars. But, read on. Polaris is not nearly as dim as it looks!

If you have been learning your guidepost stars as they rise in the East, you won’t be surprised by the two bright stars which flank – and outshine – our pole star in May. To the northwest is Capella, a star we first met when it rose in the northeast in November. In May the northeast is dominated by a star that is almost Capella’s twin in brightness, Vega, a guidepost star we introduce in May. (See “Look East!” for more about Vega.) As a bonus we also have the twin guidepost stars, Castor and Pollux, making their way into the northern sky high above Capella. But let’s focus on Capella and Vega.

New star watchers frequently assume the North Star, Polaris, will be the brightest star in the sky. It isn’t even close! It is bright, but its fame comes because it’s very, very close to where the axis of the Earth points to the north celestial pole. So it serves anyone trying to find true north as a very good guide. But when it comes to brightness, it’s in the same league as the stars in the Big Dipper. Quite bright, but it can’t hold a candle to Capella and Vega. When you look at a list of the brightest stars, Vega is number 5 and Capella number 6. Polaris, our North Star, is number 48!

As simple as one, two, three!

That doesn’t mean Polaris is a slouch, though. First, in the eastern sky in May you meet Spica. (That’s on our chart for the east.) One distinction of Spica is that it’s as close to being magnitude 1 as any star gets. A distinction of Polaris is, as Spica defines magnitude 1, Polaris defines magnitude 2. (To be precise it’s magnitude 2.02.) Vega and Capella are extremely close to magnitude 0. Vega is 0.03 and Capella 0.08. Good luck on telling the difference! This month, if you look north 90 minutes after sunset, you may think Capella is a bit brighter actually – but if it appears that way it will be because it’s a bit higher in the sky and thus is not dimmed by having to fight its way through as much of our atmosphere as Vega is doing at the moment. So don’t try to split hairs. And yes, you’re right – they are NOT really as “simple as one, two, three” – on the magnitude scale they are as simple as zero, one, two – but that doesn’t sound as good! (Vega and Capella are zero; Spica is magnitude one, and Polaris, magnitude two.)

So which is really the brightest star of these four? Are you ready for this? Polaris! That’s right – if you put all four stars at the same distance, Polaris would appear to be the brightest. Remember, that the lower the magnitude number, the brighter the star. In absolute magnitude – the brightness we give to a star if they are all shining fromt he same distance  -these four stars line up this way:

• Polaris -3.4
• Spica -3.2
• Capella 0.1
• Vega 0.3

And those absolute magnitudes also reflect their order in distance from us.

• Polaris 433 light years
• Spica 250 light years
• Capella 45 light years
• Vega 25 light years

So sometimes a star is very bright because it’s – well, very bright. But sometimes it only appears to be very bright because it is very close to us. If you put our closest star into this group, our Sun – remember, it is just 8 light minutes from us – in absolute magnitude it would be by far the dimmest of this group – absolute magnitude 4.9! So while Polaris doesn’t look all that bright, it really is a very bright star! Another way to think about this is if you move our Sun out to where Polaris is, it would be about magnitude 10! You would need binoculars or a telescope to see it!

Click image for larger view of this chart. Yellow circle represents typical field of view for low power binoculars, such as 10X50.

To get an idea of the difference between Polaris and our Sun, point your binoculars towards Polaris.  You should be able to make out the “Engagement Ring” asterism – granted, a crude ring with Polaris as the diamond.  This asterism points you towards the true north celestial pole  – just avery short distance to the other side of Polaris –  and also gives you a good idea of about how far Polaris is from that pole.  Small binoculars will not show you the companion of Polaris, but to get an idea of how bright our Sun would be at the same distance, look for the star labelled 9.8 – and if you can’t see it, see if you can see the star that’s a bit brighter labelled “9.”  Don’t expect to see these instantly. Sit calmly, relax, and keep looking for at least a minute.

And here’s one more cool secret about Polaris. It has a companion that just happens to be quite dim – magnitude 9. It’s fun to see the two of them if you have a small telescope, though it’s not all that easy because Polaris is so much brighter than its companion. But if you get a chance to see Polaris and its companion in a telescope, remind yourself that the very faint companion is still a bit brighter than our Sun would look at this distance. This companion, known as Polaris B, was discovered in 1780 by William Herschel, and for many years Polaris was thought to be a binary star – that is, a system of two stars orbiting about a common center of gravity. But Polaris was holding one more surprise – it’s really a triple star.

The top image shows Polaris and its faint companion that can be seen in any decent backyard telescope. The bottom image shows the second companion, Polaris Ab, which has only been seen by using the Hubble Space Telescope.

This has been known for some time, but no one could see the third star until they turned the Hubble Space telescope on it in 2006. That’s when NASA released the first image of this third companion. The accompanying press release explained it this way:

By stretching the capabilities of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to the limit, astronomers have photographed the close companion of Polaris for the first time. They presented their findings  in a press conference at the 207th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington, D.C.

“The star we observed is so close to Polaris that we needed every available bit of Hubble’s resolution to see it,” said Smithsonian astronomer Nancy Evans (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics). The companion proved to be less than two-tenths of an arc second from Polaris — an incredibly tiny angle equivalent to the apparent diameter of a quarter located 19 miles away. At the system’s distance of 430 light years, that translates into a separation of about 2 billion miles.

“The brightness difference between the two stars made it even more difficult to resolve them,” stated Howard Bond of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). Polaris is a supergiant more than two thousand times brighter than the Sun, while its companion is a main-sequence star. “With Hubble, we’ve pulled the North Star’s companion out of the shadows and into the spotlight.”

So as I said, Polaris is no slouch. It not only is a very bright star, but it also has two companions, and scientists are still studying it because it is unusual in other respects. We’ll talk about those other differences another month.

Look North in March 2013 – Oops, there’s a big hole in the sky!

Well, not really – but unless you live in an area with very dark skies, free of light pollution, you’re going to have a hard time seeing the faint stars above Polaris, the North Star, at this time of year. Here’s what our March north sky star chart looks like.

Our northern sky is quite dark above Polaris, but the Big Dipper is prominent in the northeast and serves as our primary guide to finding the North Star. Click image for larger view. (Prepared from a screen shot of Starry Nights software.)

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Notice the emptiness? The area labeled “Dark Hole?” Mind you, this is not a black hole – just an area of our sky that looks quite empty – unless your viewing location is free of light pollution and your eyes are thoroughly dark adapted. If you can see all seven stars of the Little Dipper, then you should see several stars in this area. But even then I doubt if you will be able to trace out the constellation which goes there. It’s known as Camelopardalis. My copy of Urania’s Mirror, published in 1832, says Camelopardalis consists:

. . . of 58 stars, but none larger than the fourth magnitude. . . .The Camelopard is an Abysinian animal, taller than the elephant, but not so thick. He is so named because he has a head and neck like a camel, and is spotted like a leopard; but his spots are white upon a reddish brown ground. The Italians call him giraffa. To Hevelius, who formed the constellation, he owes his celestial honors.

Ah, giraffe! Thank you, Italians. Here’s how he is pictured in full color on one of the constellation cards that came with Urania’s Mirror (The scan is © Ian Ridpath.)

Camelopardalis as depicted on the card from Urania’s Mirror, 1832. Notice the Pointer Stars of the Big Dipper are near the upper left and Polaris is just to the right of the giraffe’s head, so at this time of year the giraffe would appear upside down in our northern skies.

If you put him in the sky at this time of year his head would be down near Polaris. . . . Hmmm… the illustrator seems to have forgotten the spots mentioned in the text, and the animal’s neck got a bit longer than a camel’s. Ah well – while the 1830s had some advantages in terms of simplicity, I don’t think I would like to be trying to learn the night sky with Urania’s Mirror as my only guide.

Oh – but speaking of long necks, one of the things that has always fascinated me is some of the early attempts at astronomical telescopes and particularly the one in the following woodcut. This was an instrument built by Johann Hevelius in the mid-17th century at his observatory in Poland. The tube was about 150 feet long – befitting, in a strange way, for the man who put a giraffe in the northern sky!

Click image for larger view.

There was a logic to this giraffe-like telescope.

At the time a telescope’s lens could not bring the different colors of light to a single focus, so bright objects were always fringed with color and nothing was in really sharp focus. This negative effect, however, could be lessened by making the telescope’s focal length longer – so to get a really good telescope you had to go to these ridiculous extremes – which, of course, made it a nearly impossible telescope to use in any practical way.

Impressive to look at – difficult to aim and look through.

Fortunately the achromatic lens – combining two different types of glass – was invented and this reduced the problem considerably even in a relatively short telescope. We still use such achromatic lenses today ins mall refractor, though if you want to get a really sharp, color-free image you pay considerably more money for an apochromatic lens. Or, you listen to Newton who figured way back int he 1600s that the way around this was to design a telescope that used a mirror to collect the light rather than a lens. Trouble was, it took a long time to learn how to make mirrors that didn’t tarnish quickly when exposed to the night air. Nothings easy!

Now – about or “hole” in the northern sky. Get to a place where light pollution is at a minimum and it will fill with stars – relatively faint, but they are there. Just scan around with binoculars and you’ll find some even through the typical light pollution most people today are forced to endure.