By Prashant. Naik
The chart above shows the night sky over Shillong during the month of July 2011at 8. p.m. Shillong being at 25.5o N,latitude we see mostly northern constellations. The E-W line shows the celestial equator and the line cutting it shows the zodiac line or the sun’s apparent path. The capital letters indicate the name of constellations and the other letters indicate the prominent stars. Planet Saturn is clearly visible in the sky. Planet Pluto through powerful telescope only.
The prominent constellations visible are Aquila,Cygnus,Lyra,( the famous summer triangle connecting star deneb in Cygnus star altair in Aquilla and star vega in Lyra) ,Virgo,Leo,Libra Draco, Cassiopea, Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, ,Ophichus, Sagittarius, Scorpius and ,Corvus,
The constellation of the month is Scorpius.( To me it really resembles scorpion) This is one of the zodiacal constellations, although the Sun only takes about a week to pass across it. In Greek mythology, associated with Scorpios almost invariably also contain a reference to Orion, a Greek giant who was a hunter and the most handsome man in the world. By no means impervious to the charms of females, Orion was said to have such an enormous stature that he could walk on the bottom of the sea without getting his head wet. One such tale involves Eos. She invited him to spend the night with her and he happily accepted but later bragged of the conquest and also boasted that he was such a magnificent hunter, that he would exterminate all of the wild beasts of the Earth. Apollo (God of the Sun, who was responsible for guarding herds) persuaded Gaia (or possibly Hera), to send a giant scorpion with impenetrable armor to sting Orion until the hunter was dead. Some variations state that the scorpion succeeded, while others maintain that Orion tried to escape by swimming out to sea, only to be shot by Artemis.
The most interesting object by far is a, Anteras, a supergiant variable (mag 0?86 – 1?02) with a distinctly green mag 6?5 companion. Antares has a diameter of about 563 million km with an M1 spectra and lies at a distance of 520 light years.
Stars e is a mag 2?28, K2 type at some 66 light years distance and stars d, Dschubba, ß, Graffias, t, s, p and µ are all B types within a range of mag 2?34 – 2?99, situated between 520 and 750 light years in distance. Other objects of interest in Scorpius include two globular clusters, M4 and M80, both of which are to be found fairly close to Antares. An open cluster, M6, is located within Scorpius as M7, a much larger open cluster and one which is nearly lost in the great stellar clouds of the Milky Way.