Constellation Observations Activity (Project 4)
Location is Odenton, MD
This is a very straightforward and easy project. Use star charts or your planisphereto identify any five constellations in the real night sky. If you live in a big city, you will only be able to see bright constellations or you will need to drive to a darker location. The Winter constellations are reasonably bright and there are bright ones in the Summer sky as well, so you shouldn’t have much trouble locating the five required. Start by locating Polaris (the North Star) by using the pole pointers at the edge of the bowl of the big dipper (Ursa Major). The Little Dipper (part of Ursa Minor) stars are quite faint except for Polaris, so you won’t be able to see that if you have light pollution.
Please describe where you observed from and the sky conditions at your
observing site. Use the GPS application on your smart phone to determine the coordinates of your observing location. Identify the city and/or community and what equipment, if any, you used. If you observed from home, tell me so and make sure that you sent me your address as I requested at the beginning of the class. Did you use binoculars or some other observing aid?
Submit the names of the five constellations you found, describe how you found Polaris, and comment about how easy (or hard) it was to use the star charts to locate constellations.
Do the constellations in the sky look like the ones on the star charts or planisphere? If not, how do they differ?
You can write a separate document or append your answers to this document and submit it to your assignment folder.
See below for detailed instructions on how to use your planisphere.