Astronomically Cool

Astronomically Cool

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Thursday, April 22, 2010

Good News and Bad News

The bad news is this: John Green interpreted the theme to be "mind-blowing things" instead of astronomy, so there'll be no more astronomy-themed video blogs from them this week....  But if you like covert birthday planning, go ahead and check it out anyway; Hank's turning thirty.

The good news is that Hubble would be an adorable name for a goldfish.

But also, I've found a couple of other old astronomy books, and I think I'll blog about Harry Potter-related constellations... because I love Harry Potter.  And there are a lot of them.

So, for today, Sirius is part of the dog-star constellation.  The brightest star in the night sky, Sirius is part of Canis Major.  This star was on the tongue of the dog, and Sirius itself wasn't particularly significant to the ancient Greeks, but its rising is connected with "the scorching heat of midsummer" (Condos)*.  And of course, Sirius Black was Harry Potter's godfather in the Harry Potter series.  Worthy of note is that his animagus form was actually, like Canis Major, a dog.

*Star Myths of the Greeks and Romans: A Sourcebook by Theony Condos
Yeah.... I don't really see it either.

2 comments:

  1. That totally looks like a dog!!! Aludra is the end of his tail, Farad is the end of one of his back legs, Mirzam is the end of one of his front legs, Sirius is the base of his neck, and that triangle dealie is his head =D?

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  2. But Sirius is s'posed to be his tongue! =\ I don't know, I guess. I can't really see it on this computer at all, unfortunately.

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