Brian Jones: Winter stars
CAMELOPARDALIS: THE GIRAFFE WHICH ROAMS A BARREN AREA OF SKY
This month we are checking out one of the faintest of the constellations, primarily to offer you the challenge of picking out this obscure group which graces the skies in the region of the Pole Star. During winter evenings, the faint constellation Camelopardalis can be spotted a little to the north of the overhead point. To find it, you first of all need to find Polaris, the Pole Star, shown here on a finder chart which depicts the Plough and Ursa Minor as seen in the northern sky during January evenings. Following a line from Merak, through Dubhe, as shown on the main chart, will lead you to the Pole Star. The stars forming the giraffe can be seen stretching away from the region of Polaris roughly towards the overhead point, and you should be able to pick out the constellation reasonably easily providing the sky is dark, clear and free of moonlight.
The constellation of Camelopardalis is long and straggling and indeed resembles the character it depicts, lying in an area of sky containing no bright stars and which consequently was left blank by Greek astronomers. Camelopardalis was originally devised by the Dutch astronomer Petrus Plancius in 1613 and was first depicted graphically in 1624 by the German astronomer Jacob Bartsch who included it in his star chart published that year. The constellation is thought to represent the animal which carried Rebecca on her journey to Canaan and her marriage to Isaac.
Click to enlarge
The brightest star in Camelopardalis is Beta, a yellowish supergiant around a hundred times the size of our Sun and which shines from a distance of well over 1,000 light years. Slightly fainter is the somewhat-unromantically named CS, a bluish star which lies at a distance of around 4,000 light years. Considerably closer than these two is Gamma, a star whose light set off towards us a little over 300 years ago.
Of particular interest in Camelopardalis is Kemble’s Cascade. Named after the Franciscan Friar and amateur astronomer Lucian J. Kemble, this slightly-meandering chain of unrelated stars is a pretty sight when viewed through binoculars. Also known as the Waterfall, it stretches for a distance equal to around five times the diameter of a full Moon. To locate it, start from a point roughly a third of the way from the star BE towards CS. Kemble’s Cascade can then be seen as a meandering line of stars roughly in the direction of the star 7, one of the southernmost stars in Camelopardalis. If the sky is fairly dark and moonless, and you sweep the area with binoculars, you should easily pick out this pretty collection of stars.
Although not the topic of mythology that some constellations are, why not take a trip outdoors to check out the stars which form this faint constellation, and give yourself a pat on the back if you manage to identify its major stars! Happy stargazing!