The purpose of this lab assignment is to familiarize you with sky maps. You will be using a Web program to create a sky map for the date and time of your birth.
| Star Chart for the date and time of your birth | 6 points |
| Answers to 4 follow-up questions | 1 point each |
| Tuesday April 27 - Thursday April 29 | 2 points |
| Thursday April 29 - Tuesday May 4 | 4 points |
| Tuesday May 4 - Thursday May 6 | 6 points |
| Thursday May 6 - Tuesday May 11 | 8 points |
The deadline on each day is 2 PM, or immediately after you come into the classroom. Therefore, if you hand in your project on your way out of class on Tuesday April 27, it will be considered one class-meeting late, and two points will be deducted. If you do not come to class on any of these days, your project will still be considered late if you turn it in later. You may turn in your lab at section or office hours. Of course, if you want to turn your lab in before the due date you are free to do so. No projects will be accepted without a valid excuse after 2 PM on May 11.
Points will not be deducted for people with valid excuses for handing in labs late. Valid excuses include: severe illness, family emergency, catastrophic earthquakes, large comets or asteroids hitting the Earth and killing everybody, etc. We reserve the right to demand proof of any of these (particularly the killer asteroids). If you know in advance that you will not be able to turn in your project on the due date for whatever reason, talk to us and make arrangements.
Go to the star chart page. Follow the directions given to make your chart. See the Hints section if you're having trouble.
You should give us the following, with your name on each page:
You MUST turn in a hardcopy of everything. The TA's will not look at charts or answers to questions posted on the Web, emailed to us, or in any form except a paper copy.
All parts of your project must be submitted at the same time. If you turn in an incomplete lab, you may not turn the rest of it in later, even if you submit all of the parts before the due date.
Whenever you turn in your lab, make sure we actually get it. Don't slip it under our doors, leave it on our desks, put it in our mailboxes, or give it to our office-mates.
To make your chart easier for your TA's to read and grade (we remind you that TA's do have the right to deduct points for difficult-to-read charts!), you should follow these guidelines when printing the chart that you will hand in:
| Aries | Mar 21 - Apr 19 | Libra | Sep 23 - Oct 21 |
| Taurus | Apr 20 - May 20 | Scorpio | Oct 22 - Nov 21 |
| Gemini | May 21 - Jun 21 | Sagittarius | Nov 22 - Dec 21 | Cancer | Jun 22 - Jul 22 | Capricorn | Dec 22 - Jan 19 |
| Leo | Jul 23 - Aug 21 | Aquarius | Jan 20 - Feb 19 |
| Virgo | Aug 22 - Sep 22 | Pisces | Feb 20 - Mar 20 |
Hint 1: Print a copy of your birth chart first, then add or subtract 12 hours to your time of birth to get a second chart (you do not need to hand in the second chart). This will be helpful for answering the follow-up questions.
Hint 2: A zodiacal constellation is any constellation that contains part of the ecliptic within its boundaries. To see the constellation boundaries better, go to the Display menu. Under "Constellations," select "Names" and "Boundaries," and de-select "Outlines." It may also be helpful to change the color scheme to black on white.
This page will first create a chart for your observing site right now.
WARNING: If you click on a chart to zoom in, the program
undoes any modifications you have made with the "Update" button.
For example, if you make a chart for your birth date and time, then click on
it to zoom in, the program changes the chart to be one for the current date
and time, and undoes any other changes you have made.
After it makes a chart for now, go to the "Date and Time" menu. Select the diamond beside "Universal Time" and enter your birth date and time in Universal Time.
| Time conversions | |
|---|---|
| Pacific Standard Time | add 8 hours for UT |
| Mountain Standard Time/Pacific Daylight Time | add 7 hours |
| Central Standard Time/Mountain Daylight Time | add 6 hours |
| Eastern Standard Time/Central Daylight Time | add 5 hours |
| Eastern Daylight Time | add 4 hours |
If you don't know if you were born during daylight saving time, you may assume that it has always started April 1 and ended October 31.
If you were born outside the continental US and don't know how your time zone relates to UT, talk to one of us in class or section or email me (lharden@ucolick.org) and we'll try to figure it out.
If you don't know what time you were born, use midnight UT (0:00).
The charts can be fairly hard to read in the default mode. Go to the "Display Options" menu below the "Observing Site" menu. Select "Ecliptic and Equator" and "Moon and Planets," and de-select "Deep-Sky Objects." Under "Constellations," de-select "Outlines," and select "Boundaries" and "Names." (See Note for the difference between constellation outlines and boundaries) Under "Stars," you can keep the limiting magnitude at 5.5, but it is helpful to change the "Names for magnitude 2.5 and brighter" to read "Names for magnitude 1.5 and brighter." De-select "Bayer-Flamsteed codes." Under "Colour scheme," choose "Black on white background" from the pull-down menu. If you do all these things, your chart will be in accordance with the Printing Guidelines.
Printing hardcopies of charts causes all kinds of problems. I suggest you print a chart from this page sometime before the class before this lab is due- then, if you're having trouble printing, you can get help. In the vast majority of cases, printing problems will not be considered a valid excuse for handing in your lab late, and points will be deducted.
Some of you don't need to hear this (and some of you probably don't want to), but I recommend that you start this project well before the due date. It shouldn't take a long time, but if you start early, you have many opportunities to ask questions in class if things aren't going well, or if you don't understand the assignment. Since you have three weeks to read this assignment and do the project, we will not be very sympathetic if you come in on the due date and say, "I don't have my lab because the computers were down last night," or "I don't have my chart because I didn't know I was supposed to turn it in," or anything like that.
In the 1930's, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) divided the entire sky into 88 constellations. Now, every star in the sky belongs to some constellation. I find that the best way to think about it is to imagine the stars as cities, and the constellations as states: every city is contained within a state. In this analogy, the constellation borders are the state lines. When we asked you which constellation the Sun was in when you were born, this is what we're referring to.
Constellation outlines are probably closer to what most people think of as "constellations." They are connect-the-dots lines drawn between the stars. Supposedly, some of the figures made this way actually look like the thing the constellation is named after (I think the people who named a lot of the constellations were using some serious controlled substances, though...). These outlines are not standardized, and different books will sometimes use different sets of outlines in a constellation. For the purposes of this assignment, I find that the constellation outlines contribute nothing to the chart, and make it hard to see the boundaries, which is why I asked you not to include them on your chart that you hand in.