Have you ever seen the North star, Polaris? It’s decently bright and very close to the North celestial pole. Lining up with the rotation axis of the Earth, the North celestial pole is the point in the sky that never moves, day or night. If you know how to find Polaris, it becomes easy to find the cardinal directions and navigate by the stars. And finding it simply requires finding the big dipper, a bright and easily recognizable object. The same rules apply in the southern hemisphere. But even though there is no southern star, there is another fantastic object in the South that can guide you to the...
The big dipper is visible every day of the year from the Northern Hemisphere. It’s easily recognizable and most people have spotted it at least once in their life. But most people also assume that it is just a boring collection of stars where nothing interesting ever happens. The big dipper is so much more than a simple spoon in the sky, especially right now. The well-known asterism, part of the much larger Ursa Major constellation, is home to many visible deep-sky objects, though right now it is visited by the comet C/2013 US10 Catalina, close to the visible binary...
Welcome to a new series of posts that will characterize 1000 amazing facts about the Universe. There is so much out there that we have yet to learn, and every day, astronomers across the globe are using their research to reveal the deepest secrets of the cosmos. This series will look at the strangest, coolest, most exciting facts that we have discovered in hundreds of years of modern science. Fact #2: There are more Galaxies than you could possibly count. Our night sky is jam-packed with stars. If you’ve ever left the city to go far beyond the reach of...
