Did you know, the “star” off to the left (and above) is Saturn? And the star on the right is Regulus. The one above, at the vertex of the acute angle, is Algieba. No, I didn’t know any of those things until I looked it all up on Starry Night, although I was pretty sure one of the three was a planet.
This sight will have to keep us for a few years.
rakkity
Terrific sequence, Michael! Who’da thought Acton would have clearer skies than Boulder? Thanks for the info on Saturn, Regulus & Algieba, Jennifer. (Algieba?)
jennifer
Rakkity, can you help? I thought I’d look up the pronounciation of what Starry Night called “Algieba”, but it’s not showing up on the star pronounciation lists. So did Starry Night makes a mistake?
Jen
Oh, so wonderful. I enjoyed every moment of it, until the adult in me made the kid in me go to sleep. Thank you for the wonderful pictures.
rakkity
Jennifer–I’ve found two different pronunciations on the web, al-gee’ba (hard g, long e) and al-je’ba (soft g,long e). The second one seems more definitive, since it’s taken from the Proceedings of the
Astronomical Journal of the Pacific (1936): http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1936PASP…48..139R
Since the name comes from the Arabic word for Brow of the Lion (Al-Jabbar), one might guess that the soft “g” is right.
(You’ll have to copy and paste the link into the URL box, since I can’t seem to make it work in an tag.)
jennifer
Did you know, the “star” off to the left (and above) is Saturn? And the star on the right is Regulus. The one above, at the vertex of the acute angle, is Algieba. No, I didn’t know any of those things until I looked it all up on Starry Night, although I was pretty sure one of the three was a planet.
This sight will have to keep us for a few years.
rakkity
Terrific sequence, Michael! Who’da thought Acton would have clearer skies than Boulder? Thanks for the info on Saturn, Regulus & Algieba, Jennifer. (Algieba?)
jennifer
Rakkity, can you help? I thought I’d look up the pronounciation of what Starry Night called “Algieba”, but it’s not showing up on the star pronounciation lists. So did Starry Night makes a mistake?
Jen
Oh, so wonderful. I enjoyed every moment of it, until the adult in me made the kid in me go to sleep. Thank you for the wonderful pictures.
rakkity
Jennifer–I’ve found two different pronunciations on the web, al-gee’ba (hard g, long e) and al-je’ba (soft g,long e). The second one seems more definitive, since it’s taken from the Proceedings of the
Astronomical Journal of the Pacific (1936):
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1936PASP…48..139R
Since the name comes from the Arabic word for Brow of the Lion (Al-Jabbar), one might guess that the soft “g” is right.
(You’ll have to copy and paste the link into the URL box, since I can’t seem to make it work in an tag.)