STAR GAZER
THE INTERNATIONAL EDITION
1052nd Show
To Be Aired : Monday 2/2/98 through Sunday 2/8/98
Greetings! Greetings! Fellow stargazers and because
the color red is always associated with Valentine's Day we thought we'd
give you a special cosmic red Valentine, one which you can share with your
loved one or even with your not-so-loved one if you choose. Let me show
you: O.K., we've got our skies set up for any Valentine's Day night for
any year as long as you live. And if you go out on any Valentine's Day night
between the hours of 8 and 9, and look due South you'll see a very bright
red star shining high above the horizon. Indeed it is the brightest red
star we can see with the naked eye from planet Earth and just coincidentally
reaches its highest point above the horizon on every Valentine's Day between
the hours of 8 and 9 p.m. It marks the shoulder star of the great sky giant,
Orion the Hunter and its name is 'Betelgeuse' which in Arabic means 'The
Armpit' which isn't very romantic for Valentine's Day, but if you want to
give your beloved a really big Valentine, well this is about as big a one
as you'll ever find. You see if we do some comparison of Betelgeuse, our
Valentine Star, with our own star the Sun and our own planet the Earth you'll
understand why. Now we all know that our Earth is 8 thousand miles
wide, pretty dinky compared to our Sun which is 865 thousand miles wide.
But to really understand their differences in size just try to imagine that
we could fit over one million Earth's inside our Sun. However to understand
the size of Betelgeuse really takes a stretch because we could fit over
160 million of our Suns inside of it! When it's at its smallest size. And
I say smallest size because Betelgeuse is one of those stars that changes
its size regularly, like a humongous slowly pulsating heart that beats only
once every six years. In fact when Betelgeuse is fully contracted and at
its minimum size it is still about 500 times the diameter of our Sun. And
when it expands to its maximum size it stretches to almost 900 times our
Sun's width. Or if you care to think of it this way, if we could place Betelgeuse
where our Sun is, at its minimum Betelgeuse would stretch out all the way
past the orbits of Mercury, Venus, Earth, all the way to Mars, and at its
maximum would reach all the way to Jupiter. Wow! So there you have it. A
great big humongous Valentine for your sweetheart, courtesy of your neighborhood
galaxy. And to see it simply go outside any clear Valentine's Night between
8 and 9 p.m., look due South and there you'll see it at its very highest
above the horizon. But just to play it safe, and so as not to look like
a cheapskate, I still recommend that you purchase that traditional box of
chocolates. Besides, it will be great fun to eat by the light of the great
Valentine's Star if you simply remember to Keep Looking Up!
Starry Night Deluxe was used to produce
this episode of Star Gazer
For graphics for this script (Click) Here
* This week's Sky At A Glance and Planet Roundup from Sky
& Telescope.
This week's Sky At A Glance displays current week only.
1053rd Show
To Be Aired : Monday 2/9/98 through Sunday 2/15/98
Horkheimer: Greetings, Greetings fellow stargazers
and how would you like to see one of the true wonders of the universe close
up? Let me show you : O.K., we've got our skies set up so that we're facing
due South any February, any year, in early evening, between the hours of
8 and 10 p.m. your local time and right in front of you, there you'll see
him, the brightest star pattern of Winter, Orion the mighty Hunter, identifiable
even to school children by his three equally spaced belt stars lined up
in a row; 2 bright stars marking his shoulders; and 2 bright stars marking
his knees. But it's not any of these stars which happens to be the favorite
object of amateurs around the world. No indeed, it is the middle star of
the three dim stars suspended below Orion's Belt which are popularly called
the Sword Stars. But if you look very closely at the middle star of the
sword it looks strange, kind of fuzzy. And no matter how hard you try to
focus on it it won't appear as a sharp, crisp point of light. In fact, if
you look at it with a pair of binoculars it will look slightly bigger but
even fuzzier. But the strangeness of that middle sword star becomes even
more apparent if we take a very long time exposure photograph of it through
a good amateur telescope because what develops is truly mind blowing. Indeed,
the middle sword star is not a star at all but a huge nursery of many stars
born less than a million years ago with many more still cocooned in their
embryonic gas clouds, yet awaiting birth; and called the Orion Nebula, is
incredibly far away...16 hundred light years beyond which means when we
look at it in our century we see the light that left it 16 centuries ago.
And now let's take a journey just a few hundred light years out into space
so we can get a closer look. And as we draw closer and closer and closer
keep in mind that while our entire Solar System is less than one light day
in diameter, this birth place of stars is 30 light years in diameter. That's
more than 20 thousand times the diameter of our entire Solar System. There
is enough gaseous star stuff here to make 10 thousand more stars like our
Sun. And believe it or not only 4 newly born stars within it, spaced like
a baseball diamond, light up all the surrounding gas from which new stars
will be born. And although 16 hundred light years away is still so incredibly
bright that even our ancestors noted that the middle star in the sword appeared
not to be a star at all, but some strange kind of fuzzy light. So some time
this February go outside between 8 and 10, look due South and contemplate
this wonder of the universe that we in our time are privileged to be
the first to truly understand. Wow! What a wonderful time to Keep Looking
Up!
Starry Night Deluxe was used to produce
this episode of Star Gazer
For graphics for this script (Click) Here
* This week's Sky At A Glance and Planet
Roundup from Sky & Telescope.
This week's Sky At A Glance displays current week only.
1054th Show
To Be Aired : Monday 2/16/98 through Sunday 2/22/98
Horkheimer: Greetings, greetings, fellow star gazers,
and while Benjamin Franklin is reputed to have said "The Early Bird
Get's The Worm", far more people have been reputed to say "So
who wants a worm early in the morning anyway?" At any rate for those
of you who are early risers we've got something much better than a
worm for you. Indeed, if you've been getting up about an hour to an hour
and a half before sunrise every morning for the past couple of weeks and
looked over toward the southeast, then you've undoubtedly seen the dazzling
brilliant light of the second planet out from the Sun,Venus which in itself
is reason enough to get up early in the morning. But if you never get up
early in the morning may I suggest that you mark one morning on your calendar
to try it for a change, and that is Monday morning, February 23rd because
if you get up one to two hours before sunrise and look Southeast February
23rd you will see an absolutely breathtaking pairing of an exquisite crescent
Moon and the brightest planet of them all, Venus. And if you happen to have
a pair of binoculars and can hold them real steady, or if you have a small
telescope, you will even be able to see that Venus will display a crescent
shape not unsimilar to that of the Moon's. But there the similarity ends
because while our Moon is a 2 thousand mile wide world only one quarter
of a million miles away, Venus on the other hand is an 8 thousand mile
wide world and is 41 million miles away on the morning of Monday, February
23rd. And while you're out there if you look just to the right of this exquisite
pairing of distant worlds you'll see a wonderful preview of coming summer
attractions because slightly farther to the South you will see the familiar
teapot-shaped portion of our old summer friend, Sagittarius, and to its
right the exquisite, looks-just-like-its -name Scorpion-shaped pattern of
stars called Scorpius with its bright red heart star Antares, which is not
quite bright enough to be a match with Winter's exquisite Betelgeuse in
the shoulder of Orion the Hunter. And just as a reminder for those of you
who may have forgotten from our summer episodes just how big Antares really
is, let me refresh your memory and tell you once again that the heart of
Scorpius is a whopper, a true super giant among stars because while our
own star The Sun, is so big we could fit over one million Venuses inside
it, Antares is so huge we could fit over 216 million of our Sun's inside
it. Or to put it another way, Antares would have room enough for 13 quadrillion
of our Moons. Wow! So, there you have it. An absolutely awesome cosmic experience
for the morning of Monday, February 23rd. A beautiful crescent Venus, an
exquisite crescent Moon, plus a true super star of our local universe just
waiting for you to become an early bird for just one morning. And you can
forget the worm if you promise to remember to Keep Looking Up!
Starry Night Deluxe was used to produce
this episode of Star Gazer
For graphics for this script (Click) Here
* This week's Sky At A Glance and Planet
Roundup from Sky & Telescope.
This week's Sky At A Glance displays current week only.
1055th Show
To Be Aired : Monday 2/23/98 through Sunday 3/1/98
Horkheimer: Greetings, greetings, fellow star gazers, and if you've ever had the good fortune to look through even the smallest, cheapest department store telescope at the 6th planet out from the Sun, the ringed planet Saturn, then like most people Saturn is probably your favorite planet. But if you're one of those who has a hard time finding the planets we can make it really easy for you this upcoming weekend because Saturday and Sunday nights, the 28th and the 1st, an exquisite crescent moon will float in the heavens close by each evening. Let me show you: O.K., we're looking west just after sunset, Saturday night, February 28th where you will see an exquisite 3 day old crescent Moon hovering in the heavens just below the ringed planet. And on Sunday night, March 1st, just after sunset, the 4 day old Moon will have gotten just slightly fatter and will hover above the 6th planet. Of course you won't be able to see the rings with the naked eye, but the exquisite pairing on each evening with the Moon will still provide a beautiful naked eye sight. Then if you wait for a couple of hours, go outside around 8 P.M. your local time and look due South where you will see directly above the Southern horizon our old friend Sirius, the brightest star visible from planet Earth, which I always call the New Year's Star because it is always due South and as high as it can get at midnight every New Year's Eve, like a bright beacon welcoming in the New Year. But now 2 months later, because of our Earth's rotation on its axis and its movement along its orbit around the Sun, the New Year's Eve Star reaches its highest point above the horizon 4 hours earlier at 8 o'clock your local time on March 1st. And although we tell you about the New Year's Eve Star every year, we never have enough time in that episode to tell you what this star is really all about. You see while our Sun is 865 thousand miles wide, Sirius is almost twice as wide. And talk about temperature! While our Sun's surface temperature is 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, Sirius is 18,000 degrees. So its much greater size and temperature actually make Sirius 25 times more luminous than our Sun. But another reason it shines so brightly is because among the naked eye stars it is the 3rd closest to us, the Sun being the 1st, Alpha Centauri being 2nd. In fact Sirius is only 8 1/2 light years away, just a hop, skip and a jump, astronomically speaking. But even more fascinating is the fact we know it is approaching us at a speed of over 4 1/2 miles per second. So will we ever collide? Not a chance, but because it is also moving sideways, in just the past 2 thousand years Sirius has changed its position in the sky about one and a half times the diameter of our own Moon. So, get thee outside this upcoming weekend for an exquisite two night pairing of our Moon and Saturn and at 8 o'clock look due South for a four hour earlier replay of the New Year's Eve Star. It's fun if you just Keep Looking Up!
Starry Night Deluxe was used to produce
this episode of Star Gazer
For graphics for this script (Click) Here
* This week's Sky At A Glance and Planet
Roundup from Sky & Telescope.
This week's Sky At A Glance displays current week only.
Return to the [STAR GAZER Main Page]