I've settled on Cygnus, as I thought this would be a good way for the Prince of Dol Amroth to tell his grandson the story of Amroth and Nimrodel, and of Mithrellas.
Oh, that should work very well!
Also, I saw that Soronume would be in the northern sky, and I like the idea of a story about an Eagle of the Star that's associated with the North...
Hate to disappoint you, but Aquila isn't exactly a "northern" constellation. To view it, you have to look south, not north (although it rises fairly high overhead on summer nights). It actually lies just a bit south and east of Cygnus.
Still no reason not to use Aquila for your "Eagle of the Star" story, though.
As an aside, Deneb (in Cygnus), Vega (in Lyra), and Altair (in Aquila) form a conspicuous asterism called the Summer Triangle. It's a good landmark for a beginning stargazer to learn, as it can be used as a jumping-off point to learning many of the other constellations. Go out yourself and look for it high in the sky this summer!
Thank you again for all your help. Now all I have to do is work out what 'precession of the equinoxes' means and I'll feel like I've made a massive leap in my understanding of the universe *g*
Ever see a spinning top? As the top starts to slow, it begins to wobble on its axis while it spins. Well, that's what the spinning earth is doing - it wobbles as it rotates, just like a slowly spinning top. That means that the position of Celestial North and Celestial South (the points about which the sky seems to turn, which mark the axis of the Earth's rotation projected upward into the heavens) aren't fixed; they slowly change, tracing out a large circle over the course of about 50,000 years. The result of that slow wobble is that the rising and setting of the all the constellations shifts slowly; it's noticeable only over the course of millennia. When the Julius Caesar ruled Rome, Polaris was NOT the North Star (at that time, there was NO bright star near the North Celestial Pole, and the Romans had to use the Big Dipper as a very crude indicator of which way north lay). When the Egyptians were building the Pyramids, the pole star was a rather faint star in the constellation of Draco, called Thuban. The bright star Vega (in Lyra) actually lies along the path the earth's axis traces across the sky; in another 20,000 years or so, Vega will be the Pole Star. And then the constellations of Orion and Canis Major (which contains Sirius) will actually be visible on summer evenings.
This is where Tolkien shows he's a casual nature lover, and not an astronomer. When Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin are walking about the Shire and meet the Elves, he describes the rising of Taurus - which is indeed a constellation you'd see rising late at night on a fall evening. But unless the Third Age is separated from our own Age by 60,000 years (so that the position of the North Celestial Pole in Frodo's day is essentially the same as our own), Frodo and Co. shouldn't see Taurus rising in autumn at the same time we see it rising today. (Of course, we CAN fudge a bit, since Tolkien didn't give an exact time for when Frodo sees the Pleiades rising; maybe the timing IS off compared to modern times, just not by a lot).
Of course, Tolkien's in good company; after all, Shakespeare had Julius Caesar saying "I am as constant as the Northern Star"!
Light pollution... I've always lived in very polluted, urban areas (the town I used to live in outside London (Reading, it's just south of Oxford) is in the Thames Valley, and is so urbanized and light polluted that we would get the dawn chorus all night). When I went to the South Island of NZ, it was just amazing... I didn't know the sky and the stars could be so clear.
Light pollution is evil; it robs people of the Universe. Everyone deserves to see the REAL night sky at least once in their life.
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Oh, that should work very well!
Also, I saw that Soronume would be in the northern sky, and I like the idea of a story about an Eagle of the Star that's associated with the North...
Hate to disappoint you, but Aquila isn't exactly a "northern" constellation. To view it, you have to look south, not north (although it rises fairly high overhead on summer nights). It actually lies just a bit south and east of Cygnus.
Still no reason not to use Aquila for your "Eagle of the Star" story, though.
As an aside, Deneb (in Cygnus), Vega (in Lyra), and Altair (in Aquila) form a conspicuous asterism called the Summer Triangle. It's a good landmark for a beginning stargazer to learn, as it can be used as a jumping-off point to learning many of the other constellations. Go out yourself and look for it high in the sky this summer!
Thank you again for all your help. Now all I have to do is work out what 'precession of the equinoxes' means and I'll feel like I've made a massive leap in my understanding of the universe *g*
Ever see a spinning top? As the top starts to slow, it begins to wobble on its axis while it spins. Well, that's what the spinning earth is doing - it wobbles as it rotates, just like a slowly spinning top. That means that the position of Celestial North and Celestial South (the points about which the sky seems to turn, which mark the axis of the Earth's rotation projected upward into the heavens) aren't fixed; they slowly change, tracing out a large circle over the course of about 50,000 years. The result of that slow wobble is that the rising and setting of the all the constellations shifts slowly; it's noticeable only over the course of millennia. When the Julius Caesar ruled Rome, Polaris was NOT the North Star (at that time, there was NO bright star near the North Celestial Pole, and the Romans had to use the Big Dipper as a very crude indicator of which way north lay). When the Egyptians were building the Pyramids, the pole star was a rather faint star in the constellation of Draco, called Thuban. The bright star Vega (in Lyra) actually lies along the path the earth's axis traces across the sky; in another 20,000 years or so, Vega will be the Pole Star. And then the constellations of Orion and Canis Major (which contains Sirius) will actually be visible on summer evenings.
This is where Tolkien shows he's a casual nature lover, and not an astronomer. When Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin are walking about the Shire and meet the Elves, he describes the rising of Taurus - which is indeed a constellation you'd see rising late at night on a fall evening. But unless the Third Age is separated from our own Age by 60,000 years (so that the position of the North Celestial Pole in Frodo's day is essentially the same as our own), Frodo and Co. shouldn't see Taurus rising in autumn at the same time we see it rising today. (Of course, we CAN fudge a bit, since Tolkien didn't give an exact time for when Frodo sees the Pleiades rising; maybe the timing IS off compared to modern times, just not by a lot).
Of course, Tolkien's in good company; after all, Shakespeare had Julius Caesar saying "I am as constant as the Northern Star"!
Light pollution... I've always lived in very polluted, urban areas (the town I used to live in outside London (Reading, it's just south of Oxford) is in the Thames Valley, and is so urbanized and light polluted that we would get the dawn chorus all night). When I went to the South Island of NZ, it was just amazing... I didn't know the sky and the stars could be so clear.
Light pollution is evil; it robs people of the Universe. Everyone deserves to see the REAL night sky at least once in their life.