There is nothing like the sky in winter. The most beautiful constellations in the sky, which on summer nights are facing the other side of the world, now hover in the center of the sky and unfold before us the most spectacular picture of the sky that can be seen with the naked eye
The article was published in the magazine "Atanchata", issue 12, March 2006, editor, Amir Gur (see supplementary note at the bottom of the article).
In issue 11 of "Athanatha" we were already sitting on deck, without navigation lights, with a steaming thermos of coffee and maybe also a good partner, and we were looking at the magical northern sky. We got to know Polaris (the North Star), the carts, Princess Cassiopeia and we came to the conclusion that knowing the sky is an exciting hobby. Now, when the best of the winter sky is spread over us at the beginning of night, let's turn our gaze a little from the north and simply look up, at the center of the winter sky.
There is nothing like the sky in winter. The most beautiful constellations in the sky, which on summer nights are facing the other side of the world, now hover in the center of the sky and unfold before us the most spectacular picture of the sky that can be seen with the naked eye.
6 bright stars (alpha star, as you remember, is the brightest in the constellation to which it belongs) of 6 interesting constellations form a huge hexagon, which with a little imagination and a little flexibility can be shaped into a perfect hexagon, whose 6 sides are equal in length. This is the famous winter hexagon, the entrance ticket and our couple's invitation to the Northern Skies Club.
And let's start, of course, with the most beautiful group in the sky.
It is common to think that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, or that taste and smell should not be debated. So really - there is no point in debating that Orion the Hunter is the most beautiful constellation in the sky, the most impressive and also the most famous (or mentioned in stories and movies). Since the celestial equator crosses it, it can be seen from anywhere on Earth and there is hardly any ancient culture that did not know and cherish this group, and attributed to it the figure of a hunter or warrior.
The hunter's right leg is the bright star in the group. Rigel, an enormous blue giant whose radius is larger than the radius of Venus' orbit around our Sun (hence how much bigger Rigel is than the Sun), is one of the vertices of our hexagon. But before we continue with the hexagon we will stay for a moment with Orion. Our hunters have an extra leg, 2 shoulders and a small head above them. Left shoulder, the second brightest star in the group (but due to a historical error it is called its alpha, and Rigel, the brightest of which only got to be the beta) is a big and bright red giant named Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice became famous in our regions as the star of birth and origin of Ford Perfect and Zapod Bibrox, heroes of the great "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams. The hunter Orion wears a great belt made of three bright stars (known as Orion's belt and also made famous, especially in the movie "Men in Black") and in his belt he has a sharp sword. The sword and the belt together form an unofficial but useful subgroup - the aka the north arrow that points all night in a very good approximation to the geographical north of the earth. On a cloudy winter night, to the extent that the northern sky is shrouded in clouds and the chariots and the North Star are engulfed in haze until they are not visible, the North Arrow can replace them and serve as an alternative celestial compass.
Let's put the hunter for a moment and continue from him to the next vertex of the hexagon. Like any self-respecting hunter, Orion also has 2 faithful hounds that are always with him - 2 constellations whose alpha stars are two of the hexagon's vertices. If we take the left from Rigel (=Beta Orion) we will reach the brightest and brightest star in the sky. In fact, Sirius is the brightest star in the sky, after the Sun, the Moon and two or three planets. Sirius is so bright that there is no ancient culture that turned its gaze to the sky and did not attribute supreme importance to it. Among the Aztecs, it symbolizes the god Quetzalcoatl. The giant sphinx at Giza in Egypt bows to the rising of Sirius during the high tide in the Nile, while the Greeks saw in it the head of a large dog - in fact the head of the large dog group (Canis major). If we take one more hexagon side up from Sirius (equal in length to the distance between Rigel and Sirius) we will "fall" exactly on the star Procyon, Alpha Canis minor (Canis minor) - the brightest in the Small Dog group.
Now that we already have a clear benchmark for the length of the side of the hexagon, we can easily continue on to the fourth vertex, which belongs to the group of Gemini. Castor and Pollux, the alpha and beta stars of Gemini, are of similar brightness, and represent the heads of the two twins. At the next vertex of the hexagon is Capella, the alpha of the wagon group, which itself is a kind of small and imperfect pentagon. Capella is the sixth brightest star in the sky, a considerable honor if we remember that there are about 6000 stars in the sky that can be seen with the naked eye. The last vertex we have left is Aldebaran, the brightest in the constellation Taurus (=Alpha Taurus). Aldebaran is a red giant, a large, cold star in the middle age of stars, about to end its life as a burning star emitting strong radiation and move into a shrunken, cold white dwarf stage, before it dies out.
Now we see that the hexagon includes two constellations from the zodiac, Taurus and Gemini. What makes the dozen zodiac groups unique is simply that they are the groups that are on the plane of the earth's orbit around the sun, so if we have located 2 of them, we are sure that we have already identified the imaginary plane of the zodiac. This plane is called the Milka plane (from the language of eclipses, because it is where the solar eclipses occur. The ecliptics in English) and is marked on every sky map. If we continue to observe the sky, we will also recognize on this plane the signs of Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, and so on, as the year gets later and/or the night progresses.
If we continue on from Aldburn, further down the hex we will find that we have returned home to Rigel, the manifestation of Orion and the great hunter's right foot. Now let's take a general look at the entire hexagon, at its 6 vertices: Orion the hunter, his 2 hounds, Gemini, the charioteer and the bull, and it seems that together they really form a hexagon that is almost perfect. At the same time we will also discover that if we know the magic hexagon and remember the northern sky, then the sky has become a close friend to us that the more we know it, the more we want to go deeper into its opinion.
This is the time to pour another cup of tea from the thermos, fold the map of the sky, curl up in a coat or blanket, close your eyes and dream of stars...
Amir Gur is a graduate of the navy's seamen's course, where he began to study and become interested in knowledge of the sky. To download a rotating sky map You are invited to enter his personal blog - above and below the water.
The dome of the sky - nice to meet you
*A note from the author of the article on the occasion of publication on the Hedaan website: The winter hexagon begins to be seen these days (beginning of November) starting from around 20:00 and will be fully visible, on all the groups in it, towards midnight, until the morning. As the days pass into winter, it shines earlier and is fully visible already in the evening.
