How to Recognize Different Constellations from Quite a Long Way Away
No. 1
The Big Dipper

Screen capture of animated movie of the Big Dipper
This video shows the Big Dipper from various positions in space: Duluth, Regulus, Pollux, Castor, Aldebaran, and back to Earth. I created the video with Celestia, a free astronomy program. Download the video. The video is in Ogg Theora format; VLC is a free video player that will play it.

The stars marked with purple at the bottom of the screen from Aldebaran are Castor, to the right, and Pollux, to the left.

Screen capture of 3D animated movie of the Big Dipper
I also created a 3D version of the video using neTear’s 3D anaglyph patch for Celestia. Download the 3D video. You will need red-cyan 3D glasses, which you can purchase at many locations online. I bought mine from Rainbow Symphony.

The Celestia script I used to generate the movie is available here.

Thanks to Chris Laurel and the rest of the Celestia development team for creating Celestia. I would also like to thank Marco Klunder, who helped with the script.

Return to the main Big Dipper page.

I love the view source command and you should, too.
Copyright Lithis, 2011.