Boötes-licious

.....Astronomy, by definition, is a study that encompasses the universe, and so there is are many different new things that a study of astronomy can bring you across. For example, I learned that the symbol on the second “o” in “Boötes” is not an umlaut, but a dieresis, indicating that both letters are to be pronounced. I have been presuming that this makes the pronunciation “Bu-u-tez”. I could well be wrong, but since the constellation is never going to get offended, who cares?

.....In legend, Boötes is a herdsman with his dogs (the constellation Canes Venatici) chasing the Great B ear (Ursa Major) forever around the pole, from the latitudes of the northern United States only getting six hours below the horizon a day to rest from the chase. A quick look at the star map will show that this legend is proof that the ancient Greeks had no knowledge of kites. If we were to remake the constellations today (a scheme which has been tried before, remind me to tell you about that sometime), Boötes would almost certainly be “the kite”.

.....The second constellation that I’m looking at in this post is the Northern Crown, Corona Borealis. If I may digress for just a moment, when I was much younger, carrying my telescope out to an extraneous plot of land behind our house, one of our neighbors asked me about what constellations were visible, and when I got to this one, he said,” No. That’s not it. I’ve seen that before and that’s not it!!!” (He didn’t shout, but he was speaking very definitively and I’ve learned that nothing is more definitive on the internet than using three exclamation points.) I realized pretty quickly that he was thinking about the northern lights, the *aurora* borealis, but I cannot remember if I tried to explain that, or just thought, “Whatever, old dude” (or whatever the early 80’s version of that was) and went on.

.....At least Corona Borealis looks kind of like a circlet of stars, but recreating Boötes would allow us to reimage the second constellation that we are looking at today, Corona Borealis away from being the Northern Crown into, say, the Kite-Eating Tree from Peanuts.



.....(I know that the kite appears larger than the tree; it’s foreshortening. The tree is in the background, waiting for the kite to slip up, drift away and get caught. If this story seems too grim for backyard astronomy, please reread the original myth.)

.....As far as telescopic objects in these constellations go, there are pretty slim pickings for the suburban astronomer. The North Galactic Pole is on this map, which means that these constellations are as far away from the pale band of the Milky Way in the sky as it is possible to get. There are a few galaxies in these two constellations, but all of them are close to the limit of visibility for a backyard telescope on the best of nights. I shall try and find each one, and then come back with an update, but I really would not be expecting very much.


.....While Boötes and Corona Borealis don't have any bright deep-sky objects, they do have a couple of bright double stars that small telescopes can reach. Most stars aren't like our Sun, traveling alone through space (yes, I like the planets, but they are very tiny things compared to a star), but travel in packs of two, three, or even more. The vast majority of these stars are so far away that we can't even see them as individual stars, but some of the closer ones can be "split", as it were, in a small telescope. The two things that I look for when looking for interesting double stars are that the stars are of close to the same brightness (so one does not overwhelm the other) and are far enough apart againts the sky to be split. It also helps if the pair is bright enough to be found easily in the sky. The brightest and best in these constellations is Izar (epsilon Boötis). The two stars have magnitudes of 2.5 (bright enough to see from suburbia) and 4.9 (bright enough to be seen from some nice, quiet farmland), but they are quite close together, with a separation of 2.8 seconds of arc, or about 1/600th the size of the full Moon. (This is a useful measure for me, in that my 8" telescope, at low power, can just barely fit the whole Moon in the field of view.) You will need to use a higher magnification eyepiece to see this pair as two stars.


.....If you can find Alkalurops (Mu Boötis), that will be much easier, and the two stars will be distinct as separate stars under even what is typically the lowest magnification lens for a given telescope, 1.8 minutes of arc (1/33rd of a degree, or about 1/16 the size of the full Moon) with stars of magnitudes 4.3 (can be seen on a good night, maybe not actually in a city) and 7.0 (invisible without the telescope/binoculars. I'll give you more once I have a chance to go hunting myself, until then, please don't hestitate to let me know what you like to see (or what you'd like my help to know about something you're seeing, in other words).