Identify Constellations
Each lab class will have a session to help you learn to identify constellations, bright stars, and the planets that are currently visible. It will help if you work on this with a star chart of your own, such as you might find in an astronomy book, or in one of these free resources:
Free star chart for anywhere at any time
Tonight's sky including artficial satellites
Beautiful Stellarium free planetarium software for your computer
Stellarium is available as a paid application for Android devices too. iTunes also offers a Sky Map for iPhone and iPad for a fee.
The free Google Sky Map for Android works well, and makes use of Android device's navigation to interact with your real sky.
If want to pursue this and learn the night sky well, you should consider getting a
planisphere star finder if one was not already required for the lecture class. This is a rotating
map of the sky that will show you how it appears on any date and time. We will provide
star charts to help you in the lab. You may install the free Stellarium software to review the
appearance of the sky at home.
Constellations seen from the Northern Hemisphere by Season
Summer
- Aquila (Altair)
- Corona Borealis
- Cygnus (Deneb)
- Draco
- Hercules
- Lyra (Vega)
- Sagittarius
- Scorpius (Antares)
Fall
- Andromeda
- Cepheus
- Cassiopeia
- Pegasus
- Perseus (Algol)
Winter
- Auriga (Capella)
- Canis Major
- Canis Minor (Procyon)
- Gemini
- Orion (Betelgeuse and Rigel)
- Taurus (Aldebaran and the Pleiades)
Spring
- Bootes (Arcturus)
- Cancer
- Leo (Regulus)
- Virgo (Spica)
- Ursa Major (pointer stars)
- Ursa Minor (Polaris)