Big Dipper "Star" Actually a Sextuplet System 88
Theosis sends word that an astronomer at the University of Rochester and his colleagues have made the surprise discovery that Alcor, one of the brightest stars in the Big Dipper, is actually two stars; and it is apparently gravitationally bound to the four-star Mizar system, making the whole group a sextuplet. This would make the Mizar-Alcor sextuplet the second-nearest such system known. The discovery is especially surprising because Alcor is one of the most studied stars in the sky. The Mizar-Alcor system has been involved in many "firsts" in the history of astronomy: "Benedetto Castelli, Galileo's protege and collaborator, first observed with a telescope that Mizar was not a single star in 1617, and Galileo observed it a week after hearing about this from Castelli, and noted it in his notebooks... Those two stars, called Mizar A and Mizar B, together with Alcor, in 1857 became the first binary stars ever photographed through a telescope. In 1890, Mizar A was discovered to itself be a binary, being the first binary to be discovered using spectroscopy. In 1908, spectroscopy revealed that Mizar B was also a pair of stars, making the group the first-known quintuple star system."
Ancients needed glasses? (Score:2, Insightful)
FTFA: "In ancient times, people with exceptional vision discovered that one of the brightest stars in the Big Dipper was, in fact, two stars so close together that most people cannot distinguish them."
In ancient times the atmosphere was cleaner than now, and had a lot less light pollution from towns. Yet it apparently took "exceptional vision" to see Alcor and Mizar as separate stars. I must have phenomenal eyesight then to be able see them any night it isn't cloudy.
Re:Only 78 light years away (Score:5, Insightful)
at .9c I'm pretty sure they would be crashing through the earth. Not that it would matter, at least not for very long.
Astrobooboos (Score:3, Insightful)
Alcor is not one of the brightest stars in the Big Dipper. It is a dim double with Mizar. We usually consider the dipper to have 7 stars: 4 in the 'pot' and three in the handle. Mizar is the center of the handle. Alcor is so close to Mizar and relatively dim that it's not even considered a point in the constellation.
Not incorrect but misleading, Castelli was the first to see it as a double 'with a telescope'. The names themselves being Arabic, should be a tip off. Would Alcor have an Arabic name if they didn't see it? They are a visual double, not requiring a telescope to see if one has good vision (as opposed to an optical double, being line of sight but not necessarily naked eye). Such as noted by the Arabic chroniclers of astronomy, as well as the Native Americans who saw the bowl of the dipper as the bear, and the three stars in the handle as three bear cubs or some as three hunters (or sever, per the Mikmac) following the bear. All knew of the two stars. Sir Patrick Moore suggests the early writings refer to Mizar A and B instead, and gives good logical thinking, though I know of pre-tlescope maps of Mizar and Alcor, but not Mizar A and B,
Re:Only 78 light years away (Score:2, Insightful)
Intelligence is relative. A housecat is incredibly intelligent, compared to an omeba. We are incredibly intelligent compared to the species we evolved from. Compare us to whatever we become in another five million years and you're right, there is no intelligent life on earth.
OT - your sig:
How about +5 troll? [slashdot.org]