Andromeda
Galaxy
Alpheratz
CETUS
(The Whale)
Arct
uras
Spic
a
Reg
ulos
Altair
Antares
ERIDANUS
(The River)
LEPUS
(The Hare)
Orion
Nebula
Procyon
Castor
Pollux
GREAT
SQUARE
14
15
Into the Night With Your Planetarium
Your planetarium can be taken outdoors into the night for use as a 3-D star map. Remove the
Star Sphere and light wand from the base and hold it in your hand. The brightest stars will glow
in the dark on the Star Sphere after you have “charged” it by turning the projection lamp on for a
few moments. (Don’t look at the Star Sphere while charging it, or you will lose your darkness
adaptation.)
For a more accurate reading, set the Star Sphere in its base on a table outside. Adjust
it for the current date and time. Use the compass to position your planetarium to point north.
Turn the projection lamp on and use a sheet of white paper for a projection screen. The stars
projected onto the paper can guide you to the stars that appear in the night sky.
The Constellations of the Zodiac
The constellations of the zodiac are the oldest star patterns, with Taurus the bull being the most
ancient of them all. Because of the Earth's orbit around the Sun once a year, the Sun seems to move
against the background stars. The path the Sun appears to take is called the ecliptic. The zodiacal
constellations lay along the ecliptic, which made them very important star patterns to the ancient
peoples who relied on the night sky as their calendar.
While this 2-D map of the zodiacal constellations shows the ecliptic as a curved line, your
planetarium projects this path as a great circle around the entire sky. Turn on your planetarium and
project the stars onto a wall. Rotate it slowly so you follow the constellations of the zodiac through
one year.
Usually, the region of the sky where stars first appear is near the zenith (straight up). Look up
and you should see the circumpolar constellation, Orion the Hunter (including the big dipper).
Rising in the northeast is Cygnus the Swan. It will be in the sky all night. Meanwhile, setting in
the northwest is Auriga the Charioters, almost out of sight. Setting on the west are Gemini the
Twins and Canus Minor the Little Dog. As the night moves on, the stars appear to slowly move
west. If you want to see what the sky will look like at 9 PM, rotate the light wand left (westward)
to 9:00 PM.
Although we can’t feel it, the Earth rotates eastward at about 800 miles per hour at its surface.
The stars, Sun and moon appear to us to move westward when, in fact, we are the ones that are
moving eastward. Because of this, it seems like any given constellation or star takes about 24
hours to make one round trip around the Earth.
Astronomers, ancient and modern, counted on this 24 hour trip, day after year after century.
They agreed to divide the east-to-west movement of stars into 24 equal parts.
Astronomers picked the spot in the sky where the ecliptic (the path the Sun takes in relation to
Earth during a year) crosses the celestial equator as the Sun heads north, for the point at which
the 24 hour celestial cycle begins. This is the vernal point, the first day of spring in the Northern
Hemisphere.
Home Planetarium Projector
with Astronomy Software
ECLIPTIC
ECLIPTIC
LEO
CANCER
GEMINI
AURIGA
PERSEUS
CANIS MINOR
CANIS MINOR
ORION
LEPUS
ERIDANUS
CETUS
TAURUS
ARIES
PISCES
ANDROMEDA
PEGASUS
CYGNUS
AQUILA
LYRA
AQUARIUS
CAPRICORNUS
SAGITTARIUS
SCORPIUS
VIRGO
LIBRA
BOOTES
HERCULES
Summary of Contents for Star Theater SE
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