Astronomy in Minutes by Giles Sparrow

Author:Giles Sparrow [Sparrow, Giles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SCIENCE / Astronomy
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2015-08-04T00:00:00+00:00

Lepus and Columba

South of Orion lie two constellations of moderate brightness. Lepus is an ancient Greek star pattern, representing a hare crouching at the hunter’s feet. Columba probably originated with Dutch navigators Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman in the late 16th century.

Arneb (Alpha Leporis) is a rare white supergiant – a star about 30,000 times more luminous than the Sun and 2,200 light years away, shining at magnitude 2.6. R Leporis (‘Hind’s Crimson Star’) is one of the coolest and reddest stars in the sky – a red giant 820 light years away, pulsating in brightness between magnitudes 5.5 and 11.7 over a 430-day period. Phact (Alpha Columbae) is a blue-white star of similar brightness to Arneb, but considerably closer to our solar system at a distance of 530 light years. Messier 79 is a globular cluster of magnitude 7.7, roughly 42,000 light years from Earth in Lepus – its path through the sky suggests that it may have been pulled into orbit around the Milky Way in the relatively recent past.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.