Centaurus
Centaurus is an interesting bright star in the northern sky. One of the brightest celestial units, Centaurus has the designation of being one of the eight classical constelations, along with Taurus (the dog) and Scorpio (the scorpion). One of only three objects in the heavens with both an elliptical orbit and a fully circular orbit around the sun, Centaurus takes on the name “centaur” in Greek, meaning “winged.” Although it has been considered a minor planet, Centaurus is one of the easiest to identify and is the twelfth most significant star in our solar system.
Centaurus is an attractive, intriguing, and often Vinyl overlooked star in the sky. Although it does not receive as much attention from us as other brighter stars, it is actually a very common and important star in our solar system. Centaurus is part of a cluster of two dozen stars called the Pleiades, which are approximately three times the size of our own galaxy. The cluster, made up of about four billion stars, makes up almost half of our galaxy’s total light-years away.
Centaurus, which is also called the “Molokai” after its author, Marinus Molokai, is part of a cluster of four stars known as the Lambda Major Arc, which also includes Polaris (our North Star), Rigel (our Sun), and Algol (the other white star in the above image). It lies about one hundred and sixty degrees north of Polaris, and about one hundred and eighty degrees north of Algol. Because of its proximity to these other two stars, Centaurus has long been considered a “key” to a good explanation of why we have night skies and even a working global weather forecast. Because it is so close to the Earth, it also causes our own weather and atmospheric conditions to be far more extreme than those on Earth.
Centaurus – The Giant Star of the Southern hemisphere
What most people don’t know about centaurus is that it is actually one of only two spiral arm Constellations in the entire solar system. In fact, only two of the ten most major and minor planets are involved in having a rotation around this star system. One of them, Halley (which lies at the bottom of our own galaxy), is around Centaurus every year. And Halley’s companion, Lagrange Point (also known as the “Wammy” of the Milky Way), is only seen twice each year by most amateur astronomers. The other star in Centaurus, Ophiuchus, is not much different – it rotates once around the other two major constellations every year.
Centaurus is located at the very end of our solar system, a “weak” star (a “C” biner) with a low magnitude. Its relative proximity to the brighter stars of our galaxy means that Centaurus gets slightly dimmer during the night – by about five percent in magnitude. Also, although it is very close to the other brighter stars of our solar system, it has only one asteroid (albeit a big one) in our galaxy (that’s about as close as you can get to the brightest star in our solar system). Despite its close relationship to other very bright stars, Centaurus remains virtually invisible to the unaided human eye.
A Centaurus star is one of four possible binary star systems (two-solar elements). This system was discovered in 2021 when two separate distant galaxies were found to be moving together and a wobble was discovered with the help of an instrument known as a Doppler telescope. Based on the Doppler effect, Centaurus appears to wobble at a constant rate of seven meters per second, which is very close to the wobble of one galaxy alone (Novaaxis). Based on this study and others like it, Centaurus is an ideal system to be explored for binaries with two-solar elements – the possibilities are endless!