ASTR 2010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Piscis Austrinus, Inferior And Superior Planets, Ecliptic Coordinate System
Document Summary
Since then, various astronomers have added another 38 modern constellations, filling the gaps between ptolemy"s figures and populating the deep southern skies that were not seen by the northern societies from which modern civilization emerged. Different stars lie at different distances from the earth, but we lack any sense of depth perception when we look at them. Thus, the stars all appear to reside on the celestial sphere. To the unaided eye, even objects in the solar system appear to lie among the stars. In constructing a star name in bayer"s system, a greek letter is used with the latin possessive form of the name of the constellation in which the star is located. In most cases the brightest star in the constellation is alpha, the second brightest is beta, the third is gamma, and so on. Advanced questions: discuss the history of the ancient constellations, every night, a pageant of greek mythology circles overhead.
