Anybody know about the new sun that was discovered in northern constellation Ursa Major (Big Dipper)?
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I actually did hear about that in my college Astronomy class. I think it's pretty awesome. I mean, what if our sun burnt out. Maybe we could still have a significant amount of solar energy and radiation that could help us survive. I'm not sure if the star is old enough to develop life or not. It could have already developed it, and we just have no knowledge of it.
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Like others have already said, from Maine you can see the Big Dipper at night all year 'round.  Right now in the early evening, the Big Dipper is low in the north northeast, so if you have a lot of trees along your northern horizon you might have a hard time spotting it. It's upright at this time, like a frying pan on a stove.  Around 2 am or so the Big Dipper is in the north east, standing up on its handle (so it looks like a giant question mark).  At sunrise it will be about at its highest above the northern horizon, upside-down.\n\nHere are two of my favorite websites for star charts:\nhttp://www.skymaps.com/  This one gives you a printable sky map for the early evening sky for the current month.  I think they're set for 40 degrees north, but at 45 degrees north things really aren't much different.\nhttp://skytonight.com/  Here they have an interactive sky chart where you can enter in your location and observing time/date, which is very convenient.  But if you print it out it's not as pretty as the one from the first website.\n\nHappy observing!
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The Big Dipper is an asterism that makes up part of the constellation of Ursa Major, The Big Bear. The Little Dipper, part of the constellation of Ursa Minor, The Little Bear.\n\nThe two stars at the end of the bowl of the Big Dipper are called the "Pointer Stars" because a line drawn between them points to Polaris, the North Star.
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http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap990323.html\n\nDelta Chamaeleontis, Epsilon Chamaeleontis, Theta Chamaeleontis.  The constellation is so near the south pole that there are no names from antiquity as no one had really seen this constellation from ancient times.  The only star names are the ones assigned by science.\n\nFor an interesting picture: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap990323.html\n\nFor an informational link: http://www.dibonsmith.com/cha_con.htm\n\n-matt
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The biggest known star is the Pistol Star.Its size is about 100 times the Sun!It is ten million times brighter than the sun.It is also largest in terms of volume.   Born up to three million years ago, the Pistol Star may have weighed up to 200 times the mass of the Sun before shedding much of its weight in violent eruptions that began about 4,000 to 6,000 years ago.The Pistol Star is invisible to the naked eye because it is hidden 25,000 light-years away behind great dust clouds in the center of our Milky Way Galaxy.It is located in Pistol Nebula in the centre of Milky Way Galaxy.
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If you are in the Northern Hemisphere and it is clear out you can use the big dipper to find the North Star (off the outside of the "cup").  If you are in the southern Hemisphere I believe you can use the Southern Cross similarly (points north south).\n\nIf it is near sunrise or sunset and you know roughly what lattitude you are at and what season it is you can get a rought idea of East or West and therefore North and South (for instance if you face West, north is to your right).\n\nObviously if you have GPS or a compass that makes all this much easier (assuming your compass is lit ;) ).\n\nIf it is very clear out you can probably see the Milky Way, and the galactic plane runs roughly North South.\n\nIf you are familar with the night sky and know what time of year it is you could get a rough idea of your lattitude and maybe longitude, and, even if you can't find the North Star or Southern Cross you could find planets and the orbital plane or a familar constallation and figure out the directions.\n\nRealistically if I didn't know where I was I would either go towards light if there was a bright part of the sky (city) or find a creek and fallow it since even if it is dried up, it is likely that it will lead you to a settled area or road and hopefully would have more shade from bushes and more food and water.
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First find the Big Dipper constellation (Ursa Major) Find the two stars farthest from the dipper handle. Draw an imaginary line from the bottom star through the top star and extend the line outward. The first bright star your imaginary line comes near is the North Star---that's north.\n\nThe website shown has a diagram of the above.
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It is the BIG DIPPER (made of 7 stars) and then the NORTH STAR on thr right above it . I am here too , but ( not like my Mom , bunjiebabe ) I know the real historical answer . A boy named Benny Benson created it in 1927 .
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I think I saw this advertised in the Jan or Feb issue of Astronomy magazine.  Not sure there is a website for the contest.  Good Luck.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun
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The two Bears, Ursa Major and this constellation Ursa Minor and the whole Northern Hemisphere sky, are seen to revolve around a star that doesn't appear to move; Polaris, the North Star; located at the tip of the tail of the Little bear or Little Dipper and the orientation of the bear figures changes dramatically through the course of the night. From earliest times the two bears, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, have been paired together. With the exception of Polaris, the seven stars making up the Little Dipper, or Lesser Bear, are much fainter than the seven star making up Ursa Major, the Big Dipper, which is the most prominent group of stars in the sky. Although the Little Bear is famous as the home of the Pole Star, it was in fact invented in the 6th century B.C. as a guide to sailors and was created from the Dragon's wing, now long forgotten, which it replaced. The Little Bear is enclosed on three sides by the coils of the Dragon. To many cultures Ursa Minor was the Hole in which the earth's axle found its bearing,\n\nThe stars of Ursa Minor appear on the planisphere of Denderah as an enormous hippopotamus (the bear being unknown in Egypt), or sometimes as a crocodile, who devoured the dead who had lived a life of dreadful sin. Some of these stars have also been identified as the goddess Hesmut, a mother goddess and midwife of ancient Egypt, or Shesemtet, the Raging Mother.
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you have two cases:\n1- you are in the north hemisphere: look for ursa major constellation, it seems like a big kettle with a big handle. now extend the virtual line betwee the far two stars (opposite of handle side), it will nearly pass a single star (the bightest withen it's region) this is polaris (north pole star) and will guid you to north.\n2- you are in the south hemisphere: search for southern cross a group of 5 stars seems like a cross and guids you to south.\n\nnotes: if you found one of them exactly over your head then you are standing on one of the two poles. and if you couldn't find any of them then you are standing on the equatorial.
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the guys talking about our sun in 5 billion years are correct. by then we should figure out a way to move to a new star system.
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I googled "biggest star" and the first hit was the one below. The answer is the Pistol Star, which I never heard of before. Wikipedia also mentions Eta Carinae, which I have heard of before.
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Use the North Star like you would a compass.\n\nThe North Star is a title of the star best suited for navigation northwards. A candidate must be visible from Earth and circumpolar to the north celestial pole. The current one is Polaris. It is the star at the end of the "handle" of the Little Dipper asterism in the constellation Ursa Minor.\n\nThe North Star has been historically used by explorers to determine their latitude. At any point north of the equator the angle from the horizon to the North Star (its altitude) is the same as the latitude from which that angle was taken. For example, the angle to the North Star for a person at 30° latitude will be about 30°.\n\nPolaris has a visual magnitude of 1.97 (second magnitude). In 3000 BC the faint star Thuban in the constellation Draco was the North Star. At magnitude 3.67 (fourth magnitude) it is only one-fifth as bright as Polaris. The first magnitude star Vega will be the North Star by AD 14,000.\n\nCurrently, there is no South Star as useful as Polaris; the faint star σ Octantis is closest to the south celestial pole. However, the constellation Crux, the Southern Cross, points towards the south pole.
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I have listed several sites below--I hope they are most helpful to you. :-)\n\nCorvus (Latin for Raven/Crow) is a small southern constellation with only 11 stars visible to the naked eye (brighter than magnitude 5.5). It was one of the 48 constellations listed by Ptolemy, and also counts among the 88 modern constellations.\n\nSome stars and interesting objects in Corvus\n\na (alpha) Corvi or Al Chiba is a magnitude 4.0 white star 68 light years away.\n\nb (beta) Corvi or Kraz is a magnitude 2.7 yellow giant star 290 light years away.\n\ng (gamma) Corvi or Gienah is a magnitude 2.6 blue-white star 190 light years away.\n\nd (delta) Corvi or Algorab is a wide double star 120 light years away. The brightest component visible to the unaided eye, is a magnitude 3.0 white star, that is accompanied by a magnitude 8.4 star often described as purplish in colour.\n\nNGC 4038 and NGC 4039 are called the Antennae or Rat tailed or Ring-tailed galaxies. They are two galaxies in collision, and photographs show two tails of stars ejected from the interaction. The system is a strong radio transmitter. At magnitude 10.5 a reasonable telescope and dark skies are needed to see this. The rat tails are not visible in telescopes.\n\nNGC 4782 and NGC 4783 are also two small elliptical galaxies in contact. The similar components with bright centres, appear in a field sprinkled thinly with faint stars. Photographs show diffuse material connecting the galaxies. At magnitude 11.7 a reasonable telescope and dark skies are needed for viewing these galaxies.\n\nNGC 4361 is a planetary nebula with a visible central star. Only the central star can be seen in small telescopes, but larger telescopes will show the haze surrounding the star. An OIII filter effects a small improvement.\n\nJust over the border of Corvus in the constellation Virgo lies the famous Sombrero galaxy, M 104. It is a spiral galaxy with a large nucleus and a dense lane of dust lying about 35 million light years away.
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I think you mean Altair.\nAltair is the brightest star in the constellation Aquila or the eagle. With the stars Vega (in Lyra) and Deneb (in Cygnys the Swan) it also makes up the summer triangle. Deneb makes up the top (closest to the north) of the triangle while Altair is the lower left corner. Vega is the right corner.