Welcome to Learn the Sky, your online resource for learning about the stars.
Learn the Sky is now on Patreon, so if you would like to support this channel
in order to learn more about the sky please visit our Patreon account, the
link is listed below. We are also offering new online courses,
so if you're interested in learning about the sky in greater detail and
would like a guide to help you walk through the sky please visit learnthesky.com
and check out our online courses. Welcome, in this video we will be
reviewing the constellation Delphinus. Delphinus, which is Latin for dolphin, is
a small but very distinctive constellation that appears in the later
summer and early autumn months. As with many constellations there are variety of
myths and origins that surround this constellation. Here you can notice the
other constellations that surround Delphinus. We have Sagitta the arrow, Aquila
the eagle, and Antinous, which is no longer recognized as a constellation, but
all of these particularly Aquila can be used to help find Delphinus in the sky.
There are multiple mythology stories about Delphinus, and most of them depict
the dolphin as a friend to the gods or humans in the story. One legend
involves the courtship of the mermaid Amphitrite by Poseidon, the Greek god of
the sea, as he was the courting Amphitrite he rode on the back of a
dolphin. When she agreed to be his wife he put the dolphin up in the sky as a
sign of gratitude. Another legend of Delphinus refers to that of Arion, a
Greek poet who is also very skilled at playing the harp. The legend states that
Ariane was in danger of being thrown overboard by sailors trying to rob him,
but first he played a song so beautiful it attracted the pod of dolphins, and
when he was thrown overboard the dolphins carried him to safety. Now that
we're familiar with the mythology of Delphinus let's take a look at its
distinctive pattern. So as you look at this photo the first thing that probably
stands out to you is the bright star on the right side. This star is called
Altair, and it's a part of a larger
constellation called Aquila the Eagle, and this star is part of a larger
asterism called the Summer Triangle, which we will review. If you can find
Altair you can definitely find Delphinus, which is this diamond shape with a
little tail on the end of it, and if we take a look at when it's traced out
that's what it looks like. So you have Aquila and Altair, Sagitta the arrow,
and Delphinus the dolphin. Here's another snapshot, and you can you
can kind of imagine how they saw a dolphin out of this, it does have that
kind of curved back just like the animal does itself, and here is where the
constellation is but if we zoom in you can see that diamond shape with the tail
on the end. Here's another practice shot for you.
This one there's a ton of stars in it, but focus in on the brightest star in
the picture. If you can find that bright star that is the star Altair. So knowing
where Delphinus is close to Altair, hopefully you should be able to find it,
and this is where it is. So we have Altair with Aquila, we have Sagitta the
arrow right here, and Delphimus, and Delphinus also has another asterism,
the diamond shape has also been called Job's Coffin. So that's another asterism
within this tiny constellation. So now that you're familiar with the pattern of
Delphinus, let's go over some strategies that you can use to help you
find this constellation. So here you're looking at the Summer Triangle, and you
should be able to identify the three bright points in the photograph. If you
can you're looking at the three bright stars of the Summer Triangle, which we
have Vega, Deneb, and Altair. So knowing where Altair is can you start to look
for Delphinus. You want to look for that diamond shape with a little tail on
the end, and if you are looking and looking and you can find it this is
where it's located. So if you can find Cygnus, which is right here okay, and we
have Lyra up here, Aquila the eagle
right here, Delphinus is right next to Altair. So another strategy that I like
to use to find Delphinus, is using Pegasus. So I really like this map
because it details one of the ways in which you can find Delphinus. If you
can find The Great Square of Pegasus in the sky and you can identify from here
the head of Pegasus you can use the head of Pegasus sort of slingshot to you
right to Delphinus. So you can go right here and that's where you'll find it. So
if you're struggling to find the dolphin wait for Pegasus to come out and use the
horse's head to get you there, and I'll show you an example of what this looks
like. Here is one image, you've got the large and and that the great square
Pegasus is huge in the sky it takes up a lot of space. So you want to use the head
right here to point you right to Delphinus, and I do have a practice shot.
This is, I just started taking pictures with my phone, it's not the greatest, as I
was taking pictures with my phone I thought they look so awesome on the
little tiny screen but when you actually put them on the screen it doesn't turn
out as well as I would like, not like those professional shots but it's enough
to see The Great Square of Pegasus, and hopefully its head. So I'm gonna point it
out for you here. That's where The Great Square is, so hopefully you're seeing
that Great Square, and then here's where you would use the head, and if you would
keep continuing in this direction off the screen Delphinus would be right
over here. So Pegasus is not an easy constellation to shoot in the sky
because it it is so large, but again use that head right there to point you to
Delphinus. How that you know what Delphinus looks like and how to find it?
Let's take a look at the bright stars. So Delphinus is a small, fairly faint
constellation be easy to see, and the bright stars, the Alpha and Beta star are
named Sualocin and Rotanev, and the names of these are very interesting with
their origins. So if you would take a look at these two, if we zoom up,
okay, we have this one right here that's the brightest, and this one here, and the
interesting origin of these names is that it's a latinized form of Niccolò Cacciatore,
who is assistant director of the Palermo observatory in
Italy in 1814, and really these star names are just written backwards. So Sualocin
is really Nicolaus written backwards, and Rotanev is Venator
written backwards. So a very interesting way to get your name in the sky, this is
really the only star names in which this has happened with but just a little fun
fact for you as you point out the stars of Delphinus. Our final section of this
video will review the celestial objects that are situated within the boundaries
of Delphinus. So if we take a look at the star map for this constellation you can
see the pattern right here, and then the celestial objects, we have a star cluster
right near the diamond shape, we have another globular cluster towards the
tail-end, and then a nebula right here up in the corner of the boundary. So
if we take a look at these NGC, which stands for new general catalog, 6934
and 7006, these are both globular star clusters and just
to review what globular star clusters are, is they're typically hundred they
can be thousands to hundreds of thousands of stars that are all held
together by gravity and they're typically made of older type stars. So
you see them orbiting around around the Milky Way galaxy, around the center of it.
So their location, and age, and number of stars are different. We compare them to
open star clusters, which are typically younger have fewer stars and don't have
this spherical shape. So try when you look at Delphinus to find these two
different globular star clusters, and finally we have the Blue Flash Nebula.
This is a fifteen-minute combined exposure of the Blue Flash Nebula in the
constellation Delphinus, and you can see right here this is where
it's at, and actually some stars were some brighter stars are actually removed
out of this photo just so you can see where this is situated. This is a pretty
hard object to see so don't be discouraged if you can't find it, but you
can always try. One final celestial object that you won't be able to see in
the sky but you can at least think about it and imagine it is 18 Delphi B. This
is an extrasolar planet, approximately 238 light-years away in the
constellation of Delphinus. Its name is also Arion in reference to the greek
poet and musician. This is a very interesting planet, and if we look at
some statistics about it it's this large gas giant that orbits around a yellow
giant star in the constellation of Delphinus. It takes about 993
days in order for the planet to a go around that star and it's
a very massive and very dense planet, and it's estimated that its mass is that of
10 Jupiters, or 3274 Earths. So as you can see that's a very very large planet
and very different from what we see in our own solar system, and it was
discovered in 2008. So as you're looking at Delphinus maybe you can just imagine
this huge giant gas planet that exists within that arena. So to wrap up our
video on Delphinus the dolphin it is best seen in autumn and winter months.
You can even see it towards the tail end of summer, but its classification is that
of the seasonal constellation. The best way to find it is finding the Great
Square of Pegasus and using the horse's head to point straight to
Delphinus. You can also look for the bright star Altair in the Summer
Triangle in order to help you find it as well.
The asterism inside it is called Job's Coffin, right here, and there are two
globular star clusters in it and one nebula, and a extrasolar planet, which
you won't be able to see but at least you know it's there. Thank you so much
for watching this video. If you have any questions please leave some comments. I'd
also like to give a big thank you to David Cocklin in the UK for donating
some of his pictures for this video. Thank you so much David your help is
really appreciated! Please come back to Learn the Sky to learn more about the
different constellations and we hope to see you soon!