The UK-China Leonid Meteor Shower Observation Project

6. Finding your way around the sky.

There is a very easy constellation to find, called the PLOUGH It contains seven stars, in the shape of a plough. If you find the Plough, look at the "blade", and find two stars. These we call the Pointers. Follow these two stars up and you will find a bright star called the Pole Star. This lies very close to our North, and can be used to find your direction. Once you have found it, you can use it to find LEO, the constellation which gives its name to the LEONIDS. To find Leo from the Pole star, follow back down through the two Pointers, and you will find Leo. To find other constellations, look at your star chart, and get to know the constellations that are easy to find. These are Cassiopeia, Auriga, Cepheus, Orion, Bootes, Draco, Gemini, and Taurus.

Astronomers have known for thousands of years that some stars shine brighter than others, and both Chinese and Greek astronomers have tried to judge how much brighter one star is than another. We now call how bright a star is its "magnitude". The method used when observing with the naked eye is that stars increase in brightness by a factor of 2.5, with magnitude 1 being bright, and magnitude 6 being the dimmest the naked eye can see. The Stellar Magnitude Scale was worked out by the Greek astronomer Hipparchos long before scientific measurements were possible. There was a problem, though. Some things in the sky were found to be brighter than magnitude one, so the scale was extended through zero to negative numbers. Some meteors can be as bright as -10!

For a comparison of the magnitudes of different stars, see the table below. Remember that you will see more stars if you are in the countryside than if you live in a town or city, because there will be fewer lights and less pollution.

7. Names of the constellations

Different peoples see different patterns, or see different things in the same patterns. For example, the western constellation of Taurus (the Bull) is called the "Nutcracker" in Indonesia, the "Crocodile Skull" in New Guinea, the "Wolf's Head" in Germany, the "Tapir's Head" in South America, and the "Bull's Jaw" in ancient Babylon (Iraq).

Here are the names of the constellations in the western zodiac. See if you can find the traditional Chinese names, and find out something about the legends.
 

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