AS101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Celestial Equator, March Equinox, Lunar Phase
Document Summary
One of the stellar patterns identified by name, usually of mythological gods, people, animals, or objects. They have to do with stellar patterns. Origin: when people first looked at the sky they saw shapes and patterns, soon after those shapes were given names. A named grouping of stars that is not one of the recognized constellations. The most recognized asterism is the big dipper. Because the study of astronomy is on an international scale, it must be properly and universally defined. Betelgeuse comes from the arabic phrase yad aljawza (armpit of jawza) Many of the ancient star names is used today by astronomers. Greek letters are used to identify the brightness of stars. Alpha ( ) is the brightest star, beta ( ) is the second brightest, and so on . The magnitude scale: used to measure the brightness of stars. Hipparchus from rhodes (190-120 bce) was the first person to actually catalogue star brightness.
