Absolute perfection
Whenever you gaze upon the stars and constellations, it’s easy to forget you’re seeing a three-dimensional picture over Butler. The constellations seem to be set against a black canvas for all of us to enjoy for the ages, but that is simply not the case. The stars you see that make up the constellations are all at varying distances from Earth, from tens to thousands of light-years away. There’s no way you can travel in a spaceship to the constellation Orion the Hunter or Ursa Major the Big Bear. So you must be even more impressed when you see remarkable alignments of stars, like the three stars in a row that make up Orion’s belt. I know I am.
Another wonderful “accidental” alignment of stars is the Winter Triangle. It’s a perfect equilateral triangle made up of three bright stars from three separate constellations. What are the odds of that? It’s available in the southern evening skies these February evenings, and all three stars are bright enough to see even in light-polluted skies.
At the upper left hand corner of the Winter Triangle is the super red giant star Betelgeuse, the second brightest star in Orion the Hunter. In English, Betelgeuse roughly translates into “armpit of the great one.” That’s right, Betelgeuse marks Orion’s armpit. You can easily see that Betelgeuse has a distinct orange-reddish hue.
Astronomically, the star Betelgeuse is simply one of the biggest single things you’ve ever seen! It’s a humongous star that pulsates like a giant celestial heart. It goes from a diameter of over 600 million miles to almost a billion miles. By comparison our sun is a super wimpy star, less than a million miles in diameter. Our own Earth is less than 8,000 miles across. One of these nights, sometime within the next million years, Betelgeuse will put on the ultimate fireworks show. It will explode as a colossal supernova that will be so bright that it may not be safe to look at, like a giant halogen beam attacking your optic nerves from over 600 light-years away. It should be quite a show as Betelgeuse blows up, a fate awaiting all super giant stars.
The next star in the Winter Triangle is Sirius, which happens to be the brightest star in the night sky and the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major, Orion’s big hunting dog. Sirius marks an eye on the big doggy’s head. As you can see in the diagram, it’s at the bottom of the Winter Triangle. Just use Orion’s three belt stars as a pointer down and to the left, and you’ll hit Sirius dead on.
Sirius is the brightest star in our night sky mainly because it’s so close, at least relatively. It’s a little over eight light-years away, which equates to about 50 trillion miles. It’s a large star but nowhere near the size of the goliath Betelgeuse. Sirius’ diameter is about twice that of the sun, and cranks out more than 25 times more light than our sun. Sirius is a Greek name that translates to English as “the scorcher.” Way back when, many civilizations believed that when Sirius was close to the sun in the sky during the late summer, it physically teamed up with the sun to make for some really hot days.
The third star in the Winter Triangle is Procyon, the brightest star in the constellation Canis Minor, the little dog. To find it, look for the next brightest star to the upper left of Sirius. Procyon is a little farther away than “the scorcher,” at about 11 light-years away. It’s a little larger than Sirius, with a diameter of just over two million miles. Procyon resides in one of the poorest excuses for a constellation that I know. About all there is to the Little Dog is Procyon and the fainter star Gomeisa, just above and a little to the right of Procyon. At my star parties, I often call Canis Minor the little wiener dog of the winter heavens.
That’s it, the Winter Triangle. Three stars from three different constellations that physically have nothing to do with each other. But yet, from our view on Earth, they form an absolutely perfect triangle. I consider all of us lucky and blessed to see it!
Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis/St. Paul. He is also the author of “Stars: a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations,” published by Adventure Publications and available at bookstores and at adventurepublications.net. Contact him at mikewlynch@comcast.net.
