This column was provided by San Benito County resident and amateur astronomer David Baumgartner as part of a local series on astronomy. Lea este articulo en español aqui.
When my interest in astronomy started to grow as a young whippersnapper there weren’t many tools available to use as far as looking up information on astronomy and such. I could only imagine how most of the names of the constellations were pronounced, which still gives me fits as of today. I wondered how big, how far, how come and what the heck they meant by all that. I was the dark trying to find the answers in a timely manner.
But in the early 50’s my parents couldn’t afford a daily paper, a magazine, let alone a TV set. I got my information from a set of Encyclopedia Britannica’s from that nice salesman, from Fuller Brush, coming to our front door every couple of months or so, handing out lollypops to us kids. The main problem there was we only received one book a month, starting with the letter “A”. But as you can figure, that’s the only book I was interested in at the time. Oh come on; A, Astronomy? It’s so hard teaching.
I believe our Brush man was Mr. Stevens, I think. He ended up marrying Ms. Hazel Kessler, my Grammar School teacher out at Santa Anita in the Quien Sabe area. Though I was found of both, I wasn’t that keen on the relationship they had. Even though at the time I wasn’t quite sure what a relationship was. I had figured that when I grew up we would have one of those of our own, Hazel and I, that is. As you can see I had quite the crush on my teacher.
I needed quite a bit of help in school, that’s where Ms. Kessler came in. She was very influential, especially when one Monday morning at school she brought me my first tropical fish from her trip to San Jose, a male Siamese Betta. Little did I know that this was to be the foundation of my ownership of three pet stores. (San Luis Obispo, Hollister, and Watsonville). I think I was grateful; it was a lot of work. If that wasn’t enough; one Friday she brings to class; you guessed it, a small telescope. That’s all it took for me. But what the h**l was she thinking? I thought the pet stores were hard work. Did she have any idea how much financially this endeavor would set me back? At the age of eight I had to get a second job just to make ends meet. In a way I “whish shee wood have spente mor time with me on the art of speelling.” If so, I probably would have been finished with this article much sooner.
When I heard she was ill and her time on earth was limited, I wrote her a letter letting her know just how much she meant to me and how much she was to blame for my outcome. She was already aware of my untimely humor whether at serious times or not, so she knew where I was coming from. Soon after I received a call from her family asking if I wouldn’t mind stopping by to stay goodbye. I had a feeling she was going to mark up my letter with a red pen putting an unhappy face alongside a D- with the words saying: David I know you can do better than this. You just have to try harder. After leaving I was told that Mrs. K was quite pleased. That was one of the hardest days of my life, yet one of the most pleasant. Sure do miss her.
Sorry for the detour here. I have two people at BenitoLink that constantly have to overlook my written actions to make sense in what I’m writing about. (Good luck with that.) The two things they try to help me with is getting too wordy and stop jumping around so much. They are both very good at what they do but keeping me in line is not one of their best attributes. They’re just too nice. They’ve never mentioned it but they must wonder why I never learned how to spell. Thanks for all your help; Leslie and Noe.
So moving on here, I had to depend on my computer and the internet to get my astronomy information. But unfortunately my computer was made out of cardboard that I scrounged up from the back of Baywoods. (Best milkshakes in town.) The internet; what was that? My computer had most of the letters on it, but lacked all the F1 and F2 keys, whatever they were all about, let alone having the Ctrl and Alt keys. I really could have used them. But as you can see in my mind I was far ahead of the times. But not being all that bright I just didn’t know how to put it all together. So I ended up climbing poles for PG&E and selling homes for a living. Not a bad living, I could afford all the things that my parents couldn’t. So then I started building a star ship to travel the vast Universe. All made out of, you guessed it: cardboard. They have tons of it in back of ACE Hardware. As you can see; I really haven’t come a very long way. Have I learned anything, probably not so much, but I do have fun at it. I do have some pride in helping readers with their astronomy questions through my BenitoLink articles. I do have to be careful when working with grammar school children, for whenever I meet with them in their class to speak on astronomy I find they are quite well rehearsed on the subject. So I have to be ready for them.
Being that I didn’t have all the information I needed I would sometimes make up my own list of information all based on the best of my knowledge. (Not much to go by there.) The one thing I remember well was the list of the brightest stars in the sky, or the “Mightiest of them all”. I wish I still had that list, it would be interesting to see just how close, or how far off I was to the actual list of bright stars we have available today. I’m sure I was right on, all typed up on my cardboard computer.
When you look at a star with your naked eye, you are seeing that star maybe being brighter than another, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is bigger than that other star. Such as our number one on the list “Sirius”, the brightest star in our heavens at magnitude -1.46, much brighter than “Deneb”, which is number 19 on our list at magnitude +1.25. It turns out that Deneb is actually much bigger than Sirius but much farther away at 2,615 light years away, compared to Sirius only 8.6 light years away. To give you an idea just how big Deneb is: Deneb is some 200 times bigger than our sun. Mind-blowing.
So here is the list of the top 20 brightest stars in the sky. This is not my list from long ago mind you. Remember that the sun, moon, comets and some of the planets are brighter than Sirius. Take your star charts out some night and see if you can find any of the stars listed below. Make your own list; see how close you are to the list below.
“Who is the brightest of hem all?
- 1. Sirius
- 2. Canopus
- 3. Alpha Centauri
- 4. Arcturus
- 5. Vega
- 6. Capella
- 7. Rigel
- 8. Procyon
- 9. Betelgeuse
- 10. Achernar
- 11. Hadar
- 12. Altair
- 13. Acrux
- 14. Aldebaran
- 15. Antares
- 16. Spica
- 17. Pollux
- 18. Fomalhaut
- 19. Deneb
- 20. Mimosa
So the next time you are looking at Deneb, just remember that the light touching your eyes at that moment left Deneb over 2,615 years ago traveling at the speed of 186,000 mile per second. Do you suppose Deneb is still there? Hard to say. Harder to even comprehend. Clear Skies
What’s Coming Up this September?
Sept. 04: Moon passes 0.06° south of Pluto
Sept. 07: Full Moon
Sept. 08: Moon passes 4° north of Saturn
Sept. 08: Moon passes 3° north of Neptune
Sept. 10: Moon is sat perigee (226,662 miles from Earth)
Sept. 12: Mars passes 2° north of Spica
Sept. 12: Moon passes 5° north of Uranus
Sept. 14: Last Quarter Moon
Sept. 16: Moon passes 5° north of Jupiter
Sept. 19: Moon passes 0.8° north of Jupiter
Sept. 19: Moon passes 1.3° north of Regulus
Sept. 19: Venus passes 0.5° north of Regulus
Sept. 21: New Moon
Sept. 22: Autumnal equinox
Sept 23: Moon passes 1.1° south of Spica
Sept 24: Moon passes 4° south of Mars
Sept 26: Moon is at apogee (251,996 miles from Earth)
Sept 27: Moon passes 0.6° south of Antares
Sept 29: First Quarter Moon