ASTR 1P01 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Celestial Pole, Horizontal Coordinate System, Great Circle

• School: Brock University
• Department: Astronomy
• Course: ASTR 1P01
• Professor: Bozidar Mitrovic

Document Summary

Stars: polaris (north star), vega, deneb, altair, antares, spica Constellations: groups of stars which lie in approximately the same direction (the only thing they have in common---they may not be close to each other in space: examples: virgo, leo, cancer, libra, ophiuchus. There are 88 constellations; 44 were known in the ancient times (we take their name from greek translated into latin) The night sky we see depends on our latitude on earth (the latitude of st. catharines is 43. 167 . Always include angle and direction with the number. No matter where we are on earth we are always upright and the sky is up: The altitude of an object in the sky is its angle above the horizon: the angular size/distance is the angle between two directions. Because the earth is 1: rotating from west-east (one full rotation in 24h) and it is 2: revolving around the sun (one full revolution in 365 days).