I hope everyone enjoyed the trivia tour of Orion. My two articles barely scratched the surface, however, and there are enough interesting things in and around Orion to bore people to tears. I’ll finish by pointing out the sky around Orion and then you’ve got about half the northern hemisphere in your head. Note – in order to help with stellar pronunciations, I’ve underlined the emphasized syllable.
I covered the bright massive stars Betelgeuse and Rigel at the upper left and lower right corners of Orion in my first article. Find the three Belt stars between them; they point roughly down and east (left) to a bright star – brightest in our sky, in fact – known as Sirius, the bright star in Canis Major. It’s a binary system only 8.6 light years (ly) from us, one of the closest stars. There is a bright A-class star about twice our sun’s mass along with a faint companion white dwarf orbiting it about as far away as Neptune is from our sun. It’s estimated the system is about 200-300 million years old and the white dwarf is the remains of a bigger star that expanded into a red giant, blew off its outer layers and began to cool and die as a white dwarf.
If you visualize Sirius and Betelgeuse as two points of an equilateral triangle, you’ll see another bright star up and to their left roughly equidistant from both. This is Procyon, the bright star in Canis Minor, a star about 50 per cent more massive than ours, hotter and likely starting to turn into a reddish subgiant. It’s about 14 ly away and it too has a white dwarf binary companion, somewhat smaller than Sirius B, that orbits it every 40 years or so. Trivia note – The genus ‘procyon’ contains all of the known species of raccoons. Why the bright star in Canis Minor – the ‘lesser dogs’ – should be named after raccoons is a mystery to me.
Next, move clockwise around Orion to a close pair of stars about equally bright and just east of a line from Rigel through Betelgeuse. The eastern star is Pollux; the western is Castor, the two bright stars in Gemini, The Twins. If you forget which is which: Pollux is closer to Procyon; Castor is closer to Capella (to its right).
Pollux is a red-orange giant star 34 ly distant, about twice the sun’s mass and about nine times its diameter. It has expanded and cooled as it fuses heavier elements in its core. Originally a white Type A star, it is destined to die as a white dwarf. It is believed to have a planet more than twice Jupiter’s mass orbiting every 600 days or so.
Castor is 54 ly distant, then it gets messy. There are two Type A stars each about two solar masses orbiting each other and each of them with a close white dwarf – a spectroscopic binary. But wait – there’s more: about a light year or so away there is another pair of red dwarf stars that orbit each other and together the other four. Each of the two big stars’ dwarf companions orbit them with periods in days, the two big ones orbit each other with a period of about 450 years and the little red guys orbit each other daily and orbit the other two pairs every 14,000 years or so. Whew.
Next to clockwise is Capella, the bright star in Auriga, The Charioteer. Naturally, it’s another multiple system – quadruple this time. Two big yellow giant stars about twice the sun’s mass orbit each other closely every few months at about 42 ly distance. The other are a pair of red dwarfs much further out that orbit each other every 300 years or so.
Okay, back to Orion’s Belt. Look up and west this time about twice the distance to Bellatrix at the upper right corner. The bright reddish star is Aldebaran in the constellation of Taurus and it sits at the top left of a V-shaped group of stars that point down and right known as the Hyades open cluster. While the cluster is about 150 ly away, Aldebaran is only 65 ly or so distant and it’s not part of the cluster. It is about 16 per cent more massive than the sun and a little older so it has consumed its hydrogen, fused helium into heavier elements and expanded to a giant phase. This is us in four billion years, folks.
And, (finally), about the same distance out from Aldebaran as from Bellatrix to Aldebaran is the Pleiades open cluster. This cluster is about 120 million years old and is about 445 ly away. Also known as the Seven Sisters, the young, bright O and B stars we see are potentially massive enough to end as supernovae but there are also apparently quite a number of brown dwarfs in the cluster – ‘stars’ not quite massive enough to ignite hydrogen fusion. Not sure what will happen to them.
Okay, that’s Orion and the neighbourhood. I promise not to do any more. Suggestions are welcome in the comments.
The Astronomy Club’s next Zoom will be March 11 and the club website at: https://sunshinecoastastronomy.wordpress.com/ will have information on the speaker and topic and how to register for the meeting the week prior.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
