Astronomy

The four part, class spanning project was designed to get us acquainted with stars, their motions both in space and as our earth’s orbit seems to affect them, and their life processes. In the first part of the project, we observed the objects within our constellation’s range. These included messier objects, types of stars, and things like nebulae. We also determined how the constellation’s change in position during the year could be used to determine the length of the year. In the second part of the project, we collected information on the stars in our constellations. This information included the azimuth, altitude, distance, RA motion, declination, spectral type and mass of the stars. We then used this information to plot our constellation. In the third part of the project we used the data we had collected in part two to understand our constellation’s star’s positions in space relative to one another and to earth. We plotted the stars on different axis’s to see their position from another perspective and then plotted the constellation, as it will look one hundred thousand years from today. In part four we used the data we collected from the stars in part two to calculate which stars in our constellation would die first.

A constellation is a region in space that we use to help us navigate the night sky. It contains a group of stars that are arranged in a pattern that has been assigned a name and story. My constellation was Taurus. A myth about Taurus is that it is the bull form Zeus used to seduce yet another female human.

In part one of my project, 6 of my stars were in multiple star systems. As there were eleven stars in my constellation, 6 was not an unusual number; clusters or groups of stars are not uncommon in space. I would expect to see way more. I know that the area of a constellation covers the stars that are deep into space as well as the ones we can see from earth. Just because we can see the crab nebula and the Pleiades in Taurus does not mean that there aren’t more things like that further away. The length of the year that I calculated was 366.41 days long. So 366.41-365.25 = 1.16 / 365.25 = .0031 x 100 = .318. .318 was the margin of error in my constellation. I would hope the method I used to calculate the year was a good one, as

it was the one I was instructed to use.

Altitude is the angular distance of a object in space above the horizon. Azimuth is the measure of where things are along the horizon. The altitude and azimuth of the center of my constellation was 262 degrees 56.126 minutes and 32 degrees and 52.090 minutes respectively. I think my drawing turned out well.

The third part of the project showed where the stars were positioned in space and how these positions will affect how and where they move as time progresses. My plot was rather spaced apart, if I were in the 3-d center of my constellation, Elnath would be behind and above me, zeta would be behind and above me, Tau