September 17th is Constellation Day. I have several interesting books about constellations, the stars in the sky. The first book is “The Stars and Their Legends” by Roy Worvill, 1977. This book explains a little of the history and stories of some constellations, and the stars behind them.
The next book is my astronomy textbook “Pocket Sky Atlas” by Roger W. Sinnott, 2006. This gives us star magnitudes and brightnesses, constellations, locations in sky, various nebulas, galaxies-a true profesional guidebook for using with telescopes, binoculars, even just star gazing.
These two pages have Orion, Pleiades, and Cetus (will talk a little more about Cetus later).
A handy star finder that I have used for years when camping and getting out away from city lights is my plastic Philips’ Planisphere. This spinnable dialed contraption will help locate stars any time of the year in my general latitude.
My next constellation and star book is “3-D Star Maps” by Richard Monkhouse and John Cox, published in 1978. This book shows different constellations and galaxies in 3-D. It is interesting because some stars when they make constellations, are not flat-all the same distance from Earth. Some are much farther away than others. Some might be bigger, but are much further away, so look smaller. The concept was crazy, and the book is wonderful.
The next book is one I mentioned yesterday. It is written by H.A. Rey, the creater of Curious George. The book is “The Stars-A New Way to See Them” published 1956. Rey loved astronomy, but thought there would be a better way to outline stars and constellations to help remember what they look like. He made a slightly different star book.
Using Gemini the twins, I’ll go through the process.
Figure one is the stars in the sky with their relative size.
Figure two is the historical drawing of the twins, trying to fill the stars into an image.
Figure Three is what the books would connect to show the constellation, just connecting stars.
Figure four is the design that Rey connected stars with. They look like a set of twins, and is easier to remember. None of the stars moved, just the way to remember the connections.
Rey did this to many of the constellations. Several of these designs have been now used in modern star books.
September 17th is the birthday of William Carlos Williams, back in 1883. In college I had taken an advanced writing class. One assignment was to take several writers and do a parady of poems. I took on William Carlos Williams, Robert Frost, and Walt Whitman. I enjoy reading and writing poetry. This class pushed me to do rather detailed work not just in reading and writing, but in analysing works. While this is only a small short poem, it was part of a big work that I really enjoyed. The professor encouraged me to continue. My apologies to William Carlos Williams, and “the Red Wheelbarrow”:
The Red Wheelbarrow
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
It is at this point in writing today’s story, that things went slightly amiss. I turned to my collection of Library of America books, thinking I had a book with William Carlos William’s poetry, or at least 20th century poets anthology with the poem. No, I don’t. I had to Google.
Then, as I began reviewing final spelling and a numbers check, I found out There is no Constellation day. It is Constitution Day, this day in 1787- when the U.S. Constitution was signed. I have just written all of this story based on a mistake with my poor penmanship. When reading my ‘chicken scratchings’ put down a month ago on a calendar for this day, I saw constellations not constitution. Nonetheless, I am still going with this story. There are actual Astronomy days on May 18th and October 12th (spring and fall), but you get Constellation Day today, even if it is not a real day.
I will though, give a quick shoutout to The U.S. Constitution. I have the book “The Story of America in Pictures” arranged by Alan C. Collins 1938. It tells of our history, punctuated with paintings, illustrations, and photographs.
This painting is of the signing of the Constitution on Sept 17, 1787, at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. They honored James Madison as “The Father of the Constitution.”
Oh, my stars! Sorry to take you on a misguided adventure today, but the story was still a fun one. Please keep reading.
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