Who else has a favorite star?

[Diver0001]

When I was growing up in the Canadian Rockies, I spent a lot of time outside at night and we often had spectacular views of the night sky. (I grew up in a small town at relatively high elevation, 500km from the nearest city.)

I spent many many hours just looking up and as a young child, I picked a favorite star. It was Vega, in the constellation Lyra. It's one of the brightest stars in the night sky in the Northern Hemisphere and obviously easy to find. I always somehow found it comforting to be able to look up and find my "little triangle". No matter how much life sucked at times, Vega was like my little anchor in the sky.

I figure I can't be totally unique in this (at least now that I've written it, I sure HOPE I'm not... LOL) .....

So who else has a favorite star?

R..

 

[BabyDuck]

i'm a fan of orion's belt, because it always seemed (though i know it wasn't) to be over my house. i guess because when it's light later you aren't seeing any stars at all, and when it gets dark early, there it is over my house!

 

[siikik]

I was always partial to the ones that moved in ninety-degree angles.




Ken

 

[Diver0001]

i'm a fan of orion's belt, because it always seemed (though i know it wasn't) to be over my house. i guess because when it's light later you aren't seeing any stars at all, and when it gets dark early, there it is over my house!

My favorite star in Orion is Betelgeuse. It's a red supergiant and one of the brightest stars we know about. IIRC it's somewhere btween 750-1000 times the size of our sun and it's set on a hair-trigger to go supernova at any moment. IN fact, for all we know, it already has......

Once we can see the supernova from Earth it will be about the size and luminosity of the moon and we'll be able to see it day and night.... It will be the brightest supernova ever seen by humans.

And THAT I hope to live long enough to see! It's unlikely that we'll live long enough but it would really be something to get out of bed for.....

R..

 

[Sinbad the Diver]

Every time I think I find a favorite star, they open their mouths and ruin it...ohhhh you mean the bags of gas in outer space, not the one's in CA. Sorry, my bad

 

[wardric]

My favorite star is called the sun I appreciate it a lot, especially while on vacations in the caribean along with sand, sea and rum.

seriously, I appreciate the North star coz it shows me the way home most of the time I'm away

 

[Deefstes]

I'll +1 Diver0001's mention of Betelgeuse for pretty much the same reasons he's provided and for the fact that the star has a very cool name (according to some pronunciations at least).

If it does go supernova it might affect life on earth quite significantly though. The predictions are that the radiation won't impact us directly but it will affect our weather patterns and such. Still, I'm crossing fingers that it will happen in my lifetime, however unlikely that may be. Actually I'm crossing fingers that it has happened within my lifetime minus 650 years because if it happens today, my grandchildrens 20 generations down the line will only get to see it (I hope they spare a thought for me who missed it).

Another star(s) that I hold dear (no really) are the four members of the Southern Cross. It may sound silly as there are so many countries under the Southern Cross but I've always associated it with home. I've lived in the northern hemisphere for a couple of years and when I'd hear songs referencing the Southern Cross it would literally bring me close to tears. When in South Africa, and especially when on safari, I'd just lay on my back and enjoy the Southern Cross, little insignificant asterism that it may be.

Closely associated with the Southern Cross is Alpha Centauri, our nearest stellar neighbour. Not a single star actually but a binary (possibly trinary) system. Along with Beta Centauri and the Southern Cross, it can be used to find true south (we don't have a Polaris down here).

So intellectually, my favourite star is Betelgeuse, emotionally it's the little asterism of the Southern Cross.

 

[snepdiver]

My favorite star in Orion is Betelgeuse. It's a red supergiant and one of the brightest stars we know about. IIRC it's somewhere btween 750-1000 times the size of our sun and it's set on a hair-trigger to go supernova at any moment. IN fact, for all we know, it already has......

Once we can see the supernova from Earth it will be about the size and luminosity of the moon and we'll be able to see it day and night.... It will be the brightest supernova ever seen by humans.

And THAT I hope to live long enough to see! It's unlikely that we'll live long enough but it would really be something to get out of bed for.....

R..

I second that. It will be spectacular.

 

[Diver0001]

Nobody else has a favorite star?

 

[Chugwhump]

I love the constellation of Pleadies.

“ Pleiades callin' her home
Seven Sisters, she hears her distant Sisters ”
— Jimmy Buffett, "Desdemona's Building a Rocket Ship"


Stolen from Wikipedia:
In astronomy, the Pleiades, or seven sisters, (Messier object 45) are an open star cluster containing relatively young hot blue stars located in the constellation of Taurus. It is among the nearest star clusters to Earth and is the cluster most obvious to the naked eye in the night sky. Pleiades has several meanings in different cultures and traditions.

The cluster is dominated by hot blue stars that have formed within the last 100 million years. Dust that forms a faint reflection nebulosity around the brightest stars was thought at first to be left over from the formation of the cluster (hence the alternate name Maia Nebula after the star Maia), but is now known to be an unrelated dust cloud in the interstellar medium that the stars are currently passing through. Astronomers estimate that the cluster will survive for about another 250 million years, after which it will disperse due to gravitational interactions with its galactic neighborhood.

Chug