Constellation Eagle. Legends and myths about the constellations

The first thing that attracts us in the night sky is, of course, constellations. The photos and their names seem more appropriate to each other than the real celestial drawings and their designations, since the image, as a rule, is equipped with auxiliary lines and is deprived of "interfering" with the perception of the image of objects. However, all the beauty of the constellations can be understood only by searching them over their heads.

For the convenience of determining the position of the stars, the earth's sky is divided by the equator into the northern and southern hemispheres. Directly on this dividing line are located the equatorial constellations. Their list includes, among other things, the heavenly image of Eagle, the mythical servant of Zeus.

Location:

Constellation, located near the celestial equator, is available for observation almost anywhere in the world. The best time for his search in the northern hemisphere is the period from July to August. The constellation Eagle includes about a hundred luminaries visible from the Earth with the naked eye. Some of them are located on the eastern branch of the Milky Way.

The brightest star of the constellation Orla - Altair - enters the asterism Summer triangle. Its other two peaks are Deneb, referring to the celestial image of Cygnus, and Vega, Alpha Lyra, the second brightest star in the northern hemisphere. This neighborhood facilitates the search in the sky for both Altair himself and the whole Eagle.

Myth

Legends and myths about the constellations always tell us why in the sky this or that drawing has caught fire, and also interpret the meaning of its name. The eagle is a majestic bird, but the strength, pride and wingspan are not enough to shine over the heads of people after death.

According to legend, the Eagle, illuminating the night sky, once served Zeus, the formidable god of the ancient Greeks. He was honored with the tremendous honor of carrying thunderbolt thunderbolts and feeding them when necessary. Zeus trusted his Eagle important errands. From time to time he delivered the god to the person he needed, as in the myth about Ganymede. Orel was often the weapon of Zeus, his punishment for the guilty. The legend of Prometheus, perhaps, is ahead of all other legends and myths about constellations. The eagle was the same bird that every day was tormented by a titan who gave fire to people. The suffering of Prometheus continued until it was saved by Hercules, who killed the bird. For a faithful service, the grieved Zeus placed the Eagle in the sky.

Alpha

The most notable star in the constellation of the Eagle is Altair. By name, you can judge to which heavenly figure it refers. Altair in Arabic means "flying eagle". By brightness among all the lights, it takes the twelfth place. This alpha Eagle is due not only to its size and brilliance, but also to the relatively small distance that separates it from the Sun. According to scientists, it is 16.8 light years. Of all the objects of the spectral class A, only Sirius is closer to us.

Altair is a white star of the main sequence, surpassing the Sun by mass a little less than twice. At the same time, its luminosity is 11 times greater than the corresponding parameter of the central space object of our system. As observations have shown, the brightness of Altair varies insignificantly, by hundredths of a stellar magnitude. Today, in connection with this, it is referred to variables like the Shield Delta.

Not quite the ball

The peculiarity of Altair is its form. It is far from the ideal ball: the diameter of the Eagle's Alpha near the equator is somewhat larger than in the plane of the poles. Such an inequality is created because of the high speed with which Altair rotates around its axis. In the equatorial region, it reaches 286 km / s. One such turn takes less than 9 hours. Under the action of centrifugal forces, the star was deformed. As a result, its poles are closer to the core than the line of the equator, and are stronger because of this.

The Eagle Family

Altair, along with the beta and gamma of this constellation are located almost on a straight line. They, and a few less notable luminaries, are referred to the Aster family as asterism. Three bright points of the constellation are also united under another name - the Rocker of Libra. True, to the zodiacal heavenly figure, the patronizing people born in September, this asterism is irrelevant. Thanks to him, the constellation Eagle is easy to find.

Triple system

Beta Eagle, Alshain (translated from the Arabic "hunting hawk"), is separated from the Sun by a distance of 44.7 light years and is a system of three stars. The first component is an orange subgiant with a star magnitude of 3.17. Now this star is at the stage of turning into a red giant. By mass, it exceeds our luminary 1,3 times.

Beta Eagle B - companion of Alshain, red dwarf with visible luster 11.4. It is considerably inferior to the first component in size: its mass is 0.3 from the corresponding parameter of the Sun. The third star, beta Eagle C, is characterized by a visible luster of +10.5.

Orange giant

Another star in the constellation of the Eagle, related to the asterism of the Rocker of Libra, is Tarazet (gamma). It ranks second in brightness among all the luminaries of this heavenly figure. At the same time, the distance from the Sun to the Eagle scale significantly exceeds this figure for Altair and Alshain. It is estimated at 460 light years. If not for this quantity, then Tarazet would have outstripped the Eagle's alpha, since its brightness is more than 2.5 thousand times higher than the solar one. The apparent magnitude of the object is 2.72.

The size of the star is quite impressive: the diameter of Tarazet is so huge that if you place the star in place of the Sun, it will occupy the whole space up to the orbit of Venus.

Gamma Eagle is not a single star. Tarazet has a companion with a visible luster of 10.7.

Variables

The constellation Eagle possesses several variables such as the Cepheus delta, also called cepheids. This number includes this Eagle, changing its brightness in the range from 3.5 to 4.4m with a period of just over 7 days. It was discovered by E. Pigott a year before Gudraik's famous discovery of the variability of the Cepheus delta. For observation from the Earth with the help of binoculars, three more variable stars of this heavenly figure are available: FF, TT and U Eagle.

In commonwealth with a black hole

One of the most interesting objects of the constellation Eagle is the SS433, located at a distance of 18 thousand light-years from the Sun. The light is an eclipsing X-ray dual system. Presumably, one of its components is a black hole, the second is a spectral-class star A. Both revolve around a single center of mass in about thirteen days.

This system appeared as a result of the explosion of a massive luminary that happened about ten thousand years ago and caused the formation of the W50 nebula. The black hole is the remains of the collapsed supernova core.

The substance of the star of the system flows constantly to the black hole, forming around it an accretion disk and heating up. As a result of an increase in temperature, x-rays are constantly radiating from the surface of the object. In different directions, jets of matter are emitted into the space. They rush into space at a speed of about a quarter of the speed of light. In general, the picture of the interaction of objects in the system is similar to those illustrations, which are often accompanied in various manuals by an explanation of the processes occurring near the black hole.

New

In 1999, the constellation Eagle shone a little differently than usual. One of the luminaries increased its brilliance 70,000 times. Subsequently, he was named V1494. The brightness of the star increased in the period from 1 to 4 December. It is referred to as the so-called classical new, which is a system of two companions, one of which is a white dwarf. The substance from the second star flows to the dwarf and accumulates, sooner or later leading to an explosion. The latter is seen from the Earth as a gradually increasing gloss. According to existing data, after such a cataclysm, the system does not disintegrate. The substance in it continues to flow from the companion to the companion. Centuries later, we should expect a second explosion.

Planetary systems

Several stars belonging to the heavenly image of the Eagle have planets. These include, for example, Xely Eagle. It is an orange giant, with a number of parameters exceeding the Sun: its size is more than 12, and its luminosity is 69 times. The mass is also much more sunny, but not on such a scale - only 2.2 times. The temperature of the Xela Eagle's surface, on the other hand, is lower, it does not reach 5,000 degrees.

The planet circling the star was discovered in 2008 by Japanese astronomers. It belongs to the class of gas giants, surpassing Jupiter by a factor of 2.8. For one revolution around the Eagle Ksi planet takes 136 days.

Nebula

The eagle is a constellation (the photo is shown below), which has a very beautiful object on its "territory". This is the Shining Eye Nebula or NGC 6751. A hot star in the center of cosmic formation is like a pupil. The radiation and winds created by it form streams on images of telescopes, strongly similar to the color variations in the iris.

The shining eye is a classical planetary nebula with a diameter about 600 times the size of the solar system. The exact value of the parameter is estimated at 0.8 light years. From our luminaries the nebula separates 6,5 thousand light years.

The stellar image of the Eagle is another part of the sky full of impressive objects. Drawing constellations, photos and names of individual luminaries hide a lot of interesting information. Thanks to the capabilities of modern equipment, everyone can see what this or that site of the heavenly Eagle, remote from us for many tens and hundreds of light years, looks like.

The uniqueness of the information era in which we live is that you can very quickly find all the facts associated with a specific object: the legends (about the names of the constellations or their origin), belonging to different peoples and centuries, the latest data on the characteristics of the stars, Photos of telescopes. Today, raising your eyes to the night sky, you can not just enjoy what you have seen, but very clearly imagine how amazing beauty lurks in its depths.