This what constellations would normally look like when seen from Earth.
When seen from outside, howver, the constellations all point toward the Earth.
Seen way out from outside the galaxy, we have,
It seems the star α Cam (Alpha Camelopardalis, Alpha Cam, α Camelopardalis, HD 30614, HIP 22783, SAO 13298) is the farthest out in constellations stars.
As the Celestia wikibook pointed it out here, and as it was my reference on Celestia, one of the first things I used Celestia to demonstrate was the three dimensional nature of the constellations, wrt respect to their actual positions - contrary to what they seem to us, flat connect-the-dots.
I knew that from before, but had not quite grasped the fact that as a result of our vantage point, all constellations, in 3D, when looked at from far enough, actually point at the solar system, or rather the Earth.
Discounting the add-ons (that can be found at celestia motherlode) Most of the stars cataloged in the Celestia package reside in a particular region of the galaxy, in the sun’s neighborhood, as can be seen below,
and here,
Similar view, with more stars displayed (auto magnitude limit set to max),
###
No comments:
Post a Comment