Home Experiments

STARS

Locate the South Celestial Pole

Find the Southern Cross constellation and the two Pointers in the night sky. Draw an imaginary line extending 4 1/2 times the long axis of the Southern Cross. Then draw another imaginary line which is the perpendicular bisector of the line joining the Pointers. The two imaginary lines will cross at the South Celestial Pole. This is a point directly above the Geographic South Pole. It is also a point around which all stars in the southern hemisphere revolve.

Home Experiments

Draw Star Diameters to Scale

Materials you need are:
a ruler
a pen
a sheet of cardboard

Use the table below to draw circles to represent the star diameters.

To change the real diameter in km to the scaled diameter in cm, you must divide by 1,000,000.

NAME OF STAR

APPROXIMATE DIAMETER OF STAR (km)

SCALED DIAMETER OF STAR

(cm)

Sirius B

10 100

 

Sun

1 392 900

 
Aldebaran

100 000 000

 
Antares

544 000 000

 
IRS5

14 800 000 000