I always look up and in the northern hemisphere I often look at the "big dipper" and wondered about it and found this pic interesting during my reading. This is the spacing between each star.
Anyone use their fist and fingers for degree measurements?
Sky measurements: Degrees, arcminutes and arcseconds
"I want to believe so badly; in a truth beyond our own hidden and obscured from all but the most sensitive eyes. In the endless procession of souls, in what cannot and will not be destroyed. I want to believe we are unaware of God's eternal recompense and sadness. That we cannot see His truth. That that which is born still lives and cannot be buried in the cold earth. But only waits to be born again at God's behest, where in ancient starlight we lay in repose."
—Fox Mulder.
The Ursa Major Moving Cluster
That's the distance between, a better understanding of what's happening at the asterisms of Ursa Major aka The Big Dipper, is by using proper motion. The distances between are one of the important factors in determining proper motion.
As we see here Alkaid to the left and Dubhe to the right, (white arrows) and their direction of travel. The rest with blue likewise.
A typical open cluster's core might measure 3 to 4 light-years across; the Ursa Major Moving Cluster currently spans 30 light-years long by 18 light-years wide. And the whole works is flying through space together at 14 km/s (31,300 mph) towards a common point in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. In about a million years, it will pass about 51 light-years from the solar system.
Related:
See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228730668
Stellar Kinematic Groups. II. A Reexamination of the Membership, Activity, and
Age of the Ursa Major Group
Article in The Astronomical Journal · April 2003 DOI: 10.1086/36824
Many a time.
Amen
Last edited by Anak; 18 Jun 2023 at 14:26.
Isn't this distance from US - here on Earth? The pic I shared was apparently distance between each star in the cluster. Not from us here on Earth. But it's hard for me to ascertain that from the article. Perhaps the pic I shared was wrong.If we remove Alkaid at the handle-end and Dubhe from the Bowl, the remaining five stars all lie at approximately the same distance — between 80 and 83 light-years.
I found this part to be very interesting:
It reaffirms how when you look up, you're in fact looking at a time machine...Born inside a dense cloud of gas and dust roughly 500 ± 100 million years ago, the future Ursa Major Group formed a compact open cluster in Cambrian skies, a time when life rapidly diversified in the world's oceans and the first plants set root on land. A 2014 spectroscopic survey showed that many of the stars display a similar chemical composition — further evidence of a shared origin.
From the article's comments:
Wow, what a very, very, VERY slow learner. LOL! I guess most people just don't even realize it or even think about it much less care. For example, most people who go to their 9 to 5 job everyday and see our star the Sun don't even understand its magnificence. Not just by its sheer massive size compared to Earth, but the life giver it is, let me tell you. For one, most people's home's that are made of wood would not be possible without the Sun. The Sun brings photosynthesis to the plants and tress enabling them to grow. Then we chimps cut them down for our personal usage. Also, organic food we eat and the food for the cow which in turn is someone's lunch at McDonald's.After I first started seriously skywatching 22 years ago, it took two or three years to get a fairly decent grasp on the constellations. Then it dawned on me that the stars are not just points of light on the celestial sphere, they exist in three-dimensional space.
During the Winter we can thank the Sun not only for the warm house, but for the heater/furnace. Chances are the heater/furnace is powered by electricity (blower motor, fan inducer, main board, etc) and in the U.S. most electricity currently comes from fossil fuels which were created by organic matter many millions of years ago and were born thanks again to the Sun. Also, most people's heaters/furnaces burn a fossil fuel like natural gas (methane). Again, a fossil fuel created by the Sun for organic matter many millions of years ago.
Is it any wonder why the Ancients worshiped the Sun? Perhaps we should all take a moment and reflect upon what people knew back then and learn from it. Because sometimes the light and not the dark has answers too...
I recall a story in the MSN many moons ago. New York was hit with a total power outage. Many thousands of New Yorkers fled to their Shrinks; they could not handle the sight of infinity above their heads. They freaked out big style.
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