Author: cmcgenesis

By Jimmy Westlake, professor of physical science, Alpine Campus I love star lore.  The legends and stories attached to the stars carry us back centuries or even millennia and tell us not only about the stars, but also about the stargazers of old.

By Jimmy Westlake, professor of physical science, Alpine Campus In the course of one year, the Sun makes a 360º circuit of the sky, passing through twelve different constellations that form a band around the sky called the zodiac.  Zodiac is a word that literally means “the circle of animals.”  It contains the familiar constellations…

By Jimmy Westlake, professor of physical science, Alpine Campus Winging his way across our springtime sky is a delightful little constellation named Corvus, the Crow.  The four main stars of Corvus form an unmistakable kite-shaped pattern located one-third of the way up in our southern sky around 10:00 PM in mid-May.  Its distinctive pattern makes…

By Jimmy Westlake, professor of physical science, Alpine Campus Centaurs figured heavily in the mythology of the ancient Greeks, so much so that two of them are immortalized in the stars as our constellations of Sagittarius the Archer and Centaurus the Centaur.  The legend of these half man, half horse beasts might have originated when…

By Jimmy Westlake, professor of physical science, Alpine Campus There are lots of reasons to visit Hawaii, our 50th state, but “seeing the world’s largest telescopes” is probably not on most folks’ list of things to do.  To an astronomy enthusiast like me, though, the Big Island of Hawaii is astronomy paradise.

By Jimmy Westlake, professor of physical science, Alpine Campus “When you see the Southern Cross for the first time/You understand now why you came this way… ” I think these lyrics from the hit song by Crosby, Stills, and Nash sum up many people’s feelings about seeing the constellation of the Southern Cross for the…

By Jimmy Westlake, professor of physical science, Alpine Campus There are a number of star clusters visible to the unaided eye, like the well-known Pleiades and the Beehive clusters, but there is only one star cluster that forms a constellation all by itself.  You can see it high in the eastern sky on April evenings…