This month look for the star Shaula in Scorpius. Shaula is known to astronomers as Lambda Scorpii and it’s the second brightest star in Scorpius. Shaula means stinger in Arabic and Arab astronomers gave it this name because it, along with its neighbor, represents the stinger at the end of the tail of Scorpius the Scorpion.
Shaula is 700 light years away. Therefore, the light you see from Shaula this year left in the year 1315. While Shaula is easily visible from earth, our sun would be visible in only the largest telescopes at Shaula’s distance. Shaula is so much brighter than the sun because it’s 11 times more massive. That extra mass fuses hydrogen faster and makes its surface four times hotter and 35,000 times brighter (that is if you include its ultraviolet radiation) than the sun. Astronomers classify Shaula as a sub-giant star, meaning it’s near the end of its hydrogen fusing life and is about ready to expand into a giant star. The mass of Shaula is low enough that it will probably escape from blowing up as a supernova by puffing away its outer layers over time.
Look for Shaula in the low south to southwest early August evenings.
No comments:
Post a Comment