Skywatch for the week of May 6, 2019

Tue, May 7, 2019 BEAR TALES This weekend, Indian River State College’s Hallstrom Planetarium will present, “Bear Tales and Other Grizzly Stories”. It's kind of like a camping trip under the stars, in which we find out how Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, the Big and Little Bears, got up into the sky and how they got such long tails. “Bear Tales” will tell you some pretty interesting things about the spring sky and its constellations – there’s even a star pattern that depicts a head of hair that was said to belong to one of Cleopatra’s ancestors! We’ll talk about telescopes too, and how to look for distant galaxies out there in the Universe. There’s also campfire singing, and even a ghost story about how Blackbeard the Pirate fought his last battle! This is a great show for the whole family. Join us at the Planetarium starting Friday night. Call the IRSC Box office at 462-4750 to get tickets and more show information.

Wed, May 8, 2019 ANNIE CANNON’S OBAFGKM On May 9, 1922, astronomers formally adopted Annie Jump Cannon’s stellar classification system. Annie Cannon worked at the Harvard Observatory, where she sorted and catalogued stars by their spectra. When you look at the light of a star through a specialized prism, a spectroscope, you can see that within the rainbow spectrum of the star’s light there are thin gaps where the color is missing. These gaps result when the outer atmospheres of those stars absorb the light, and the spacing of the gaps can be matched up with similar lines made by gases on earth, which tells us what elements are present in those far-away stars – kind of a cosmic bar code. Cannon sorted the stars, and after some adjustments that had to be made because of things like high temperature ionization, resulted in a ranking of stars from hot to cool: O, B, A, F, G, K and M, which countless astronomy students have memorized by using this simple phrase – “Oh, Be A Fine Girl (or Guy,) Kiss Me!

Thur, May 9, 2019 PLACES IN THE SKY: APRIL Can you identify the thirtieth largest constellation in the sky? It is bordered on the north by Lynx the Bobcat and Auriga the Charioteer; on the east by Cancer the Crab; on the south by Canis Minor the Lesser Dog and Monoceros the Unicorn; and on the west by Orion the Hunter and Taurus the Bull. This constellation was created thousands of years ago, and its brightest stars seem to trace out a long rectangle in the heavens. In the Middle East, these stars were seen as a stack of bricks, but in Italy, they represented Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome. The Greeks named them Castor and Pollux, which are also the names of this constellation’s two brightest stars, and tonight the waxing crescent moon lies at the feet of these twin brothers. Can you name this star pattern, the third constellation of the zodiac? It is of course, the Gemini, visible in the southern sky after sunset.

Fri, May 10, 2019 BEAR TALES 2 Tonight and tomorrow, our latest star show will be presented at the Hallstrom Planetarium. It's kind of like a camping trip under the stars, in which we find out how Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, the Big and Little Bears, got up into the sky and how they got such long tails. The show is called, appropriately enough, “Bear Tales and Other Grizzly Stories,” and it took 3rd place in the International Planetarium Society’s Script Writing Competition. “Bear Tales” will tell you more interesting things about the spring sky and its constellations, how telescopes work, and how to look for distant galaxies out there in the Universe. If the skies are clear tonight, the Treasure Coast Astronomical Society will be on hand to let folks look through their telescopes at the moon and the stars. Join us at the Planetarium starting tonight. Call the IRSC Box office at 462-4750 to get tickets and more show information.