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Lyrid of the Lake
image
Created for the OAE
Caption: Winner in the 2022 IAU OAE Astrophotography Contest, category Still images of celestial patterns.
Taken in the early hours of 24 April 2022, this image captures the sky of Yunnan Province, China, with a reflection on Lake Nian. The Milky Way is visible on the left side, while whitish Earth clouds are visible on the right. A Lyrid meteor crosses the sky along the Milky Way, its tail pointing back toward the shower's radiant in the constellation Lyra, which lies outside the image above the upper edge. The natural colours of the meteor are impressively clear.
A few constellations are also visible. In the top left corner we can recognise the small constellation of the Dolphin, in which five brightest stars comprise the asterism. This asterism forms the head-part of the larger Greek constellation of the Dolphin and was considered the Dolphin since Roman times, when Ptolemy formed the new constellation of Equuleus in the southern part of the original figure. In mediaeval China, this asterism was considered the Good and the Rotten Gourd, the good one being formed by the brighter rhombus on the top and the rotten one made of faint stars in the tail of the Roman dolphin.
The bright star to the right of the Dolphin and at the top of the image is Altair, the brightest star in the constellation Aquila. In Chinese uranology, Altair, together with some adjacent areas, forms the constellation of the Drum at the River. However, in Chinese folklore, the bright star stands for a boy in love with a girl, who is represented by the bright star Vega (in Lyra) on the other side of a huge celestial stream, the Milky Way. Vega is not visible in this image but the Lyrid meteor is like a teardrop of the unlucky girl who cannot reach her lover.
In the upper right of the image, the constellation Scorpius shines with its bright reddish star Antares. With some of its neighbouring stars, it was regarded in China as the asterism of The Heart, which was also one of the Lunar Mansions. It was considered the heart of the Azure Dragon, the super-constellation of spring, in ancient China.
Scorpius and Sagittarius, in the middle of the image, contain the brightest clouds of the Milky Way, the Galactic Centre, which also has clearly visible dark clouds in front of the bright ones.
There is no classical Greco-Roman constellation between Aquila and Scorpius, but in the 17th century, two Polish astronomers, the couple Jan and Elizabeta Hevelius, named this area of bright clouds in the Milky Way Scutum, the Shield, in memory of a Polish king. In China, however, this area directly outside the super-constellation (or heavenly enclosure) of the Celestial Market Place was seen as depicting Market Officers.
Credit: Jianfeng Dai/IAU OAE
Glossary Terms:
Milky Way , Scorpius , Shooting Star , Sagittarius
Categories:
Milky Way and Interstellar Medium
, Naked Eye Astronomy
License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) icons
This file on Zenodo ( image 7.19 MB)
Watchtower and Paddy Fields Under the Starry Sky
image
Created for the OAE
Caption: Winner in the 2022 IAU OAE Astrophotography Contest, category Still images of celestial patterns.
This image, taken in April 2022, shows the sky over a plantation field around a century-old watchtower guarding a village in the province of Guangdong, China. Throughout the ages, the sky has been used as a tool for navigation and also as a calendar. By watching the apparent movement of the stars, it is possible to follow the passing of time, thereby understanding the change of the seasons which in turn helps to plan out the best timings of agricultural work.
The most prominent constellations in this image are Orion and Canis Major, the Great Dog. Commonly associated with a giant hunter in Greek mythology, Orion is followed by his hound in the shape of the constellation Canis Major.
In China, the seven bright stars of the constellation Orion are paradoxically called Three Stars (Shen) and this is one of the 28 Lunar Mansions. The Babylonian pre-zodiac, the so-called “Path of the Moon”, had 17 constellations and included Orion (therein named “True Shepherd of the Heavens”). This is not really surprising because, even in the system of the 88 modern constellations, the Moon sometimes stands in the constellation Orion. The modern constellation boundaries were defined in the 1920s in such a way that the area of Orion ends a half degree south of the ecliptic, in order to avoid the Sun entering it. Still, the Moon and the planets do occasionally. Therefore, Orion is part of the Zodiac (a stripe 5 to 10 degrees around the ecliptic), part of the path of the Moon and, of course, also used by many cultural calendars all over the world.
Sirius, the bright star in the left half of the photograph, is the brightest star in the night sky, and has been used by many indigenous cultures to determine their calendars; the Egyptians awaited the Nile flood with Sirius’s heliacal rise, while the Romans connected its reappearance after its invisibility in daylight with the hottest summer time. In Old China, Sirius was considered a single-star asterism called The Wolf. The adjacent area was called The Market for Soldiers and the area in the southern part of Canis Major was imagined as the Bow with an Arrow.
The reddish bright star in the top right corner is Betelgeuse, a red supergiant and one of the largest stars that can be seen with the naked eye. Orion’s Great Nebula below Orion’s Belt should be mentioned, but also the fainter huge red arc that is called Barnard’s Loop is clearly shown in this photograph. This galactic nebula and the circular red nebula around Orion’s not-so-bright head are both parts of star-forming regions, while the red nebula to the upper left of Orion is the Rosette Nebula in the unrecognisable constellation of Monoceros.
Credit: Likai Lin/IAU OAE
Glossary Terms:
Color , Constellation , Red Supergiant , Star , Orion
Categories:
Naked Eye Astronomy
, Stars
License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) icons
This file on Zenodo ( image 19.99 MB)
Stone Star Circles, Startrails above Stonehenge, by Till Credner, Germany
image
Created for the OAE
Caption: Second place in the IAU OAE Astrophotography Contest, category Star trails.
Astronomy is one of the oldest (if not the oldest) of the sciences, and as such has connection to various cultures over millennia. This image in a way conveys this relationship by being contextualised in Stonehenge. There is much research into what astronomers call archeoastronomy sites, and how they connect to the sky (for example, seasons, phases of the moon and much more). Civilizations across time and from all over the world have their own views and interpretations of what they see in the sky, and this has been tied not only to culture but also to the people’s day-to-day and seasonal activities. The “concentric circles” which are often referred to as “star trails”, are the result of the apparent motion of the sky, which is in reality due to the rotation of the Earth on its axis. The small dot appearing towards the top center of the image is Polaris – The North or Pole Star. Polaris is only visible to observers in the Northern latitudes. The height of the Pole Star can be used to infer the observer’s actual latitude. Stonehenge is located at around 51° North. This image is taken from one of the most notable ancient sites in the world, brings us back in time, and makes us wonder about the stories told by the people that lived in that place many millennia ago.
Credit: Till Credner/IAU OAE
Glossary Terms:
Circumpolar Stars , Star Trail
Categories:
Naked Eye Astronomy
License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) icons
This file on Zenodo ( image 1.26 MB)
