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Mintaka
Mintaka , designation Delta Orionis (δ Orionis, abbreviated Delta Ori, δ Ori) and 34 Orionis (34 Ori), is a quintuple star system some 1,200 light-years from the Sun in the constellation of Orion. Together with Alnitak (Zeta Orionis) and Alnilam (Epsilon Orionis), the three stars form Orion's Belt, known by many names among ancient cultures. The star is located very close to the celestial equator. When Orion is near the meridian, Mintaka is the rightmost of the Belt's stars when viewed from the Northern Hemisphere facing south. The five stars form a hierarchy: * Delta Ori A ** Delta Ori Aa, an eclipsing binary with an orbital period of 5.7 days *** Delta Ori Aa1, a single star *** Delta Ori Aa2, a single star ** Delta Ori Ab, which orbits Aa at a distance, with an orbital period of 152 years * Delta Ori B, a single star not physically associated with the system * Delta Ori C, a binary star with an orbital period of 30 days, also known as HD 36485 ** Delta Or ...
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Orion (constellation)
Orion is a prominent set of stars visible during winter in the northern celestial hemisphere. It is one of the IAU designated constellations, 88 modern constellations; it was among :Constellations listed by Ptolemy, the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy. It is named after Orion (mythology), a hunter in Greek mythology. Orion is most prominent during winter evenings in the Northern Hemisphere, as are five other constellations that have stars in the Winter Hexagon asterism (astronomy), asterism. Orion's two brightest stars, Rigel (β) and Betelgeuse (α), are both among the List of brightest stars, brightest stars in the night sky; both are supergiants and slightly variable star, variable. There are a further six stars brighter than magnitude 3.0, including three making the short straight line of the Orion's Belt asterism (astronomy), asterism. Orion also hosts the radiant (meteor shower), radiant of the annual Orionids, the strongest meteor shower as ...
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Orion's Belt
Orion's Belt is an asterism in the constellation of Orion. Other names include the Belt of Orion, the Three Kings, and the Three Sisters. The belt consists of three bright and easily identifiable collinear star systems – Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka – nearly equally spaced in a line, spanning an angular size of ~ (2.3°). Owing to the high surface temperatures of their constituent stars, the intense light emitted is blue-white in color. In spite of their spot-like appearance, only Alnilam is a single star; Alnitak is a triple star system, and Mintaka a sextuple. All three owe their luminosity to the presence of one or more blue supergiants. The brightest as viewed from Sol is Alnilam, with an apparent magnitude of 1.69, followed by Alnitak at 1.74 and Mintaka at 2.25. The ten stars of the three systems have a combined luminosity approximately 970,000 times that of the Sun. Orion's Belt appears widely in historical literature and in various cultures, under many di ...
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Alnitak
Alnitak is a triple star system in the constellation of Orion. It has the designations ζ Orionis, which is Latinised to Zeta Orionis and abbreviated Zeta Ori or ζ Ori, and 50 Orionis, abbreviated 50 Ori. The system is located at a distance of several hundred parsecs from the Sun and is one of the three main stars of Orion's Belt along with Alnilam and Mintaka. The primary star, Alnitak Aa, is a hot blue supergiant with an absolute magnitude of −6.0 and is the brightest class O star in the night sky with a visual magnitude of +2.0. It has two companions—Ab and B, the latter known for the longest time and the former discovered recently, producing a combined magnitude for the trio of +1.77. The stars are members of the Orion OB1 association and the association. Observational history Alnitak has been known since antiquity and, as a component of Orion's Belt, has been of widespread cultural significance. It was reported to be a double star by amateur German ast ...
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Alnilam
Alnilam is the central star of Orion's Belt in the equatorial constellation of Orion. It has the Bayer designation ε Orionis, which is Latinised to Epsilon Orionis and abbreviated Epsilon Ori or ε Ori. This is a massive, blue supergiant star some 1,200 light-years distant. It is estimated to be 419,600 times as luminous as the Sun, and 40 times as massive. Observation It is the 29th-brightest star in the sky (the fourth brightest in Orion) and is a blue supergiant. Together with Mintaka and Alnitak, the three stars make up Orion's Belt, known by many names across many ancient cultures. Alnilam is the middle star. Since 1943, the spectrum of this star has served as one of the stable anchor points by which other stars are classified, for the spectral class B0Ia. Although the spectrum shows variations, particular in the H-alpha absorption lines, this is considered typical for this type of luminous hot supergiant. It is also one of the 58 stars used in c ...
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Star System
A star system or stellar system is a small number of stars that orbit each other, bound by gravity, gravitational attraction. It may sometimes be used to refer to a single star. A large group of stars bound by gravitation is generally called a ''star cluster'' or ''galaxy'', although, broadly speaking, they are also star systems. Star systems are not to be confused with planetary systems, which include planets and similar bodies (such as comets). Terminology A star system of two stars is known as a ''binary star'', ''binary star system'' or ''physical double star''. Systems with four or more components are rare, and are much less commonly found than those with 2 or 3. Multiple-star systems are called ''triple'', ''ternary'', or ''trinary'' if they contain three stars; ''quadruple'' or ''quaternary'' if they contain four stars; ''quintuple'' or ''quintenary'' with five stars; ''sextuple'' or ''sextenary'' with six stars; ''septuple'' or ''septenary'' with seven stars; and ' ...
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Brightest Stars
This is a list of stars arranged by their apparent magnitude – their brightness as observed from Earth. It includes all stars brighter than magnitude +2.50 in visible light, measured using a ''V''-band filter in the UBV photometric system. Stars in binary systems (or other multiples) are listed by their ''total'' or ''combined'' brightness if they appear as a single star to the naked eye, or listed separately if they do not. As with all magnitude systems in astronomy, the scale is logarithmic and inverted i.e. lower/more negative numbers are brighter. Most stars on this list appear bright from Earth because they are nearby, not because they are intrinsically luminous. For a list which compensates for the distances, converting the ''apparent'' magnitude to the ''absolute'' magnitude, see the list of most luminous stars. Measurement The Sun is the brightest star as viewed from Earth, at −26.78 mag. The second brightest is Sirius at −1.46 mag. For compa ...
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Bayer Designation
A Bayer designation is a stellar designation in which a specific star is identified by a Greek alphabet, Greek or Latin letter followed by the genitive case, genitive form of its parent constellation's Latin name. The original list of Bayer designations contained 1564 stars. The brighter stars were assigned their first systematic names by the German astronomer Johann Bayer in 1603, in his star atlas ''Uranometria''. Bayer catalogued only a few stars too far south to be seen from Germany, but later astronomers (including Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille and Benjamin Apthorp Gould) supplemented Bayer's catalog with entries for southern constellations. Scheme Bayer assigned a lowercase Greek alphabet, Greek letter (alpha (α), beta (β), gamma (γ), etc.) or a Latin letter (A, b, c, etc.) to each star he catalogued, combined with the Latin name of the star's parent constellation in genitive case, genitive (possessive) form. The constellation name is frequently abbreviated to a standard three ...
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Arabic
Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic, including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic, which is derived from Classical Arabic. This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as ( "the eloquent Arabic") or simply ' (). Arabic is the List of languages by the number of countries in which they are recognized as an official language, third most widespread official language after English and French, one of six official languages of the United Nations, and the Sacred language, liturgical language of Islam. Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the wo ...
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South
South is one of the cardinal directions or compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both west and east. Etymology The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Proto-Germanic ''*sunþaz'' ("south"), possibly related to the same Proto-Indo-European root that the word ''sun'' derived from. Some languages describe south in the same way, from the fact that it is the direction of the sun at noon (in the Northern Hemisphere), like Latin meridies 'noon, south' (from medius 'middle' + dies 'day', ), while others describe south as the right-hand side of the rising sun, like Biblical Hebrew תֵּימָן teiman 'south' from יָמִין yamin 'right', Aramaic תַּימנַא taymna from יָמִין yamin 'right' and Syriac ܬܰܝܡܢܳܐ taymna from ܝܰܡܝܺܢܳܐ yamina (hence the name of Yemen, the land to the south/right of the Levant). South is sometimes abbreviated as S. Navigation By convention, the ''bottom or down ...
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Dover Publications
Dover Publications, also known as Dover Books, is an American book publisher founded in 1941 by Hayward and Blanche Cirker. It primarily reissues books that are out of print from their original publishers. These are often, but not always, books in the public domain. The original published editions may be scarce or historically significant. Dover republishes these books, making them available at a significantly reduced cost. Classic reprints Dover reprints classic works of literature, classical sheet music, and public-domain images from the 18th and 19th centuries. Dover also publishes an extensive collection of mathematical, scientific, and engineering texts. It often targets its reprints at a niche market, such as woodworking. Starting in 2015, the company branched out into graphic novel reprints, overseen by Dover acquisitions editor and former comics writer and editor Drew Ford. Most Dover reprints are photo facsimiles of the originals, retaining the original pagination ...
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Meridian (astronomy)
In astronomy, the meridian is the great circle passing through the celestial poles, as well as the zenith and nadir of an observer's location. Consequently, it contains also the north and south points on the horizon, and it is perpendicular to the celestial equator and horizon. Meridians, celestial and geographical, are determined by the pencil of planes passing through the Earth's rotation axis. For a location ''not'' on this axis, there is a unique meridian plane in this axial-pencil through that location. The intersection of this plane with Earth's surface defines two '' geographical meridians'' (either one east and one west of the prime meridian, or else the prime meridian itself and its anti-meridian), and the intersection of the plane with the celestial sphere is the celestial meridian for that location and time. There are several ways to divide the meridian into semicircles. In one approach, the observer's upper meridian extends from a celestial pole and passes t ...
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Celestial Equator
The celestial equator is the great circle of the imaginary celestial sphere on the same plane as the equator of Earth. By extension, it is also a plane of reference in the equatorial coordinate system. Due to Earth's axial tilt, the celestial equator is currently inclined by about 23.44° with respect to the ecliptic (the plane of Earth's orbit), but has varied from about 22.0° to 24.5° over the past 5 million years due to Milankovitch cycles and perturbation from other planets. An observer standing on Earth's equator visualizes the celestial equator as a semicircle passing through the zenith, the point directly overhead. As the observer moves north (or south), the celestial equator tilts towards the opposite horizon. The celestial equator is defined to be infinitely distant (since it is on the celestial sphere); thus, the ends of the semicircle always intersect the horizon due east and due west, regardless of the observer's position on Earth. At the poles, the celesti ...
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