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The term is also used to describe situations when all the planets are on the same side of the Sun although they are not necessarily in a straight line, such as on March 10, 1982. [ 8 ] Apparent planetary alignment involving Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter; the Moon is also shown, as the brightest object.
Star trail photography on salt lake in Lut desert in Iran. A star trail is a type of photograph that uses long exposure times to capture diurnal circles, the apparent motion of stars in the night sky due to Earth's rotation. A star-trail photograph shows individual stars as streaks across the image, with longer exposures yielding longer arcs.
Asterism (astronomy) A picture of stars, with a group of appearingly bright blue and white stars. The bright stars together are identified as the asterism Coathanger resembling a coathanger, in the constellation Vulpecula. An asterism is an observed pattern or group of stars in the sky. Asterisms can be any identified pattern or group of stars ...
Orion's Belt is an asterism in the constellation of Orion.Other names include the Belt of Orion, the Three Kings, and the Three Sisters. [1] The belt consists of three bright and easily identifiable collinear star systems – Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka – nearly equally spaced in a line, spanning an angular size of ~ 140′ (2.3°).
The night sky is the nighttime appearance of celestial objects like stars, planets, and the Moon, which are visible in a clear sky between sunset and sunrise, when the Sun is below the horizon. Natural light sources in a night sky include moonlight, starlight, and airglow, depending on location and timing. Aurorae light up the skies above the ...
Polaris is the brightest star in the constellation of Ursa Minor (upper right). Big Dipper and Ursa Minor in relation to Polaris. A view of Polaris in a small telescope. Polaris B is separated by 18 arc seconds from the primary star, Polaris A. A 4-day time lapse of Polaris illustrating its Cepheid type variability.
The Milky Way is approximately 890 billion to 1.54 trillion times the mass of the Sun in total (8.9 × 10 11 to 1.54 × 10 12 solar masses), [7][8][9] although stars and planets make up only a small part of this. Estimates of the mass of the Milky Way vary, depending upon the method and data used.
In astronomy, stellar classification is the classification of stars based on their spectral characteristics. Electromagnetic radiation from the star is analyzed by splitting it with a prism or diffraction grating into a spectrum exhibiting the rainbow of colors interspersed with spectral lines. Each line indicates a particular chemical element ...