Steve’s Virtual Planet

Winter Colors

This time of year is always a little bit of a challenge when it comes to listing good targets for public observation sessions. The last of the globular clusters have moved off, the galaxy scene is sparse and if the moon isn’t up all you can hope for is a nice big fat planet. Aside from the planets, what does one do to tickle the imagination of the public?

One way I have found is to use color as a theme. It’s a tricky topic since our eyes don’t perceive color very well in the first place. But then again, this is always a good opportunity for teaching a little physiology. I use my standard short explanation of how our eyes work to explain how to better enjoy the view through the telescope, regardless of the color we perceive.

Major stars like Aldebaran in Taurus and Betelgeuse in Orion are a good start. Most people see a bit of orange in both of these big stars. Rigel is in the immediate area in lower Orion, so it can serve as the quintessential “bright white” star (not to mention a bonus companion that makes it a double!). Then, by merely tilting the telescope down about 5 degrees into Lepus and navigating slightly west, we get to Hind’s Crimson Star. See my recent post on this lovely red carbon star.

The Orion Nebula is another possibility even if you don’t have a large aperture ’scope. I usually have my laptop running a program like Stellarium so I can show an image in color to augment the actual view through the telescope. Through the 36 inch cassegrain, I sometimes pick up a little color and some of the yonger visitors also do. In any case, I usually promote the idea of investigating this wonderful nebula online, since it’s probably the most photographed object in space. But this helps get the point across that even with the limitations of our eye biology, we have great resources for images to pick up where our eyes leave off.