Free Republic

The problem with Polaris is that no one can agree on how big or distant it is. Astrophysicists have a few ways to calculate the mass, age and distance of a star like Polaris. One method is a stellar evolution model...Researchers can study the brightness, color and rate of pulsation of the star and use that data to figure out how big and bright it is and what stage of life it's in. These models are especially precise for cepheids, because their rate of pulsing is directly related to their luminosity, or brightness. That makes it easy to calculate the...

Photo: Polaris ATV and snowmobile specialist Polaris has introduced a true battlefield replacement for the original Jeep, courtesy of it's Polaris Defense division. Like that original soldier's best friend, the turbo diesel MRZR is light, compact and capable of crossing tough terrain, not to mention great looking. By way of comparison, today's Humvee and its upcoming replacement are mammoth vehicles, bloated by mission creep into armored personnel carriers rather than zippy battlefield transportation. Photo: Polaris The MRZR is a return to that original mission. Coming from an ATV background and using a smallish 875 cc twin-cylinder engine, it would...

Explanation: Don't be scared. Stars won't fall from the sky and ghosts won't really haunt your neighborhood tonight. But it looks like they might be doing just that in this eerie picture of an eccentric old abandoned house in moonlight. A treat for the eye the image is a trick of stacked multiple exposures, 60 frames exposed for 25 seconds each. While the digital frames were recorded with a camera fixed to a tripod stars traced concentric arcs about the north celestial pole, only a reflection of planet Earth's rotation on its axis. Conveniently marked by bright star Polaris, the...

Explanation: One of these two bright sky objects is moving. On the right is the famous star Polaris. Although only the 45th brightest star in the sky, Polaris is famous for appearing stationary. Once you find it, it will always appear in the same direction -- all night and all day -- for the rest of your life. This is because the northern spin pole of the Earth -- called the North Celestial Pole -- points near Polaris. On the left, about ten million times closer, is Comet Lovejoy, which noticeably changes its sky position by the hour. The featured...

Explanation: In only about 12,000 years Vega will be the North Star, the closest bright star to our fair planet's North Celestial Pole. By then, when you fix your camera to a tripod long exposures of the night sky will show the concentric arcs of star trails centered on a point near Vega as Earth rotates on its axis. Of course, presently the bright star conveniently near the North Celestial Pole is Polaris, but that will change as the Earth's axis of rotation precesses, like the wobble of a spinning top with a precession period of about 26,000 years. If...

Explanation: From a camp on the northern shores of the Great Lake Erie, three short bright meteor streaks were captured in this composited night skyscape. Recorded over the early morning hours of May 24, the meteors are elusive Camelopardalids. Their trails point back to the meteor shower's radiant near Polaris, in the large but faint constellation Camelopardalis the camel leopard, or in modern terms the Giraffe. While a few meteors did appear, the shower was not an active one as the Earth crossed through the predicted debris trail of periodic comet 209P/LINEAR. Of course, the long bright streak in the...

Team found that Polaris is 2.5 times brighter today than in 137CE Experts say find is 'entirely unexpected' Astronomers have discovered that Polaris, the north star, is getting brighter. They say the star has suddenly reversed two decades of dimming. It is expanding at more than 100 times the rate they expected - and nobody is sure why. A team led by Scott Engle of Villanova University in Pennsylvania recalibrated historic measurements of Polaris by Ptolemy in 137 C.E., the Persian astronomer Al-Sufi in 964 C.E., and others. They investigated the fluctuations of the star over the course of several...

Explanation: The two bright meteors flashing through this night skyscape from August 7 are part of the ongoing Perseid meteor shower. In the direction indicated by both colorful streaks, the shower's radiant in the eponymous constellation Perseus is at the upper right. North star Polaris, near the center of all the short, arcing star trails is at the upper left. But also named for its pose against the sky, the monastery built on the daunting sandstone cliffs in the foreground is part of Meteora. A World Heritage site, Meteora is a historic complex of lofty monasteries located near Kalabaka in...

The legend has returned – and its splash is sure to reverberate from Main Street all the way to Juneau Avenue in Milwaukee. The new generation of American V-Twin cruisers made its grand debut in front of a crowd of thousands of enthusiasts and dignitaries at the Sturgis Motorcycle Hall of Fame Saturday night....... For those who worried Polaris would severely alter the legend, fear not: the new 2014 Indians harken back to a bygone era of motorcycling.

Explanation: In myth, Atlas holds up the heavens, but in this scene they seem to pivot around a lighthouse beacon. Photographed with a camera fixed to a tripod, the well-planned 30 minute exposure records star trails in the northern sky, reflecting the daily rotation of planet Earth. Hidden behind the top of the prominent Nauset Lighthouse on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, USA, the North Celestial Pole is at the center of all the star trail arcs. Making a complete circle, 360 degrees, in 24 hours, the star trail arcs cover 15 degrees each hour or 7.5 degrees in thirty minutes. Foreground...

Explanation: September's equinox arrives tomorrow as the Sun crosses the celestial equator heading south. The event marks the astronomical beginning of spring in the southern hemisphere and autumn in the north. And though the connection is still puzzling, the equinox seasons bring an increase in geomagnetic storms. So as northern nights grow longer, the equinox also heralds the arrival of a good season for aurora hunters. Recorded on September 20, these colorful northern lights were captured with camera and wide-angle lens near the Norwegian Sea coast outside Tromsø in Northern Norway. Shining at altitudes of 100 kilometers or so, the...

Explanation: Engraved in rock, these ancient petroglyphs are abundant in the Teimareh valley, located in the Zagros Mountains of central Iran. They likely tell a tale of hunters and animals found in the middle eastern valley 6,000 years ago or more, etched by artists in a prehistoric age. In the night sky above are star trails etched by the rotation of planet Earth during the long composite exposure made with a modern digital camera. On the left, the center of the star trail arcs is the North Celestial Pole (NCP), the extension of Earth's axis into space, with Polaris, the...

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Navy Strategic Systems Programs' first underwater launch of a Fleet Ballistic Missile, which was designed and built by Lockheed Martin The Polaris A1 missile successfully launched from the submerged USS George Washington (SSBN-598), the first ballistic missile submarine, July 20, 1960, off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Fla. This successful Navy test proved the capability of launching missiles from the natural protection of the deep sea, securing a strategic advantage to the nation. In 1956, as part of a Navy-industry research and development effort, the first Fleet Ballistic Missile, Polaris A1, became...

MOTORCYCLE DESIGN TROPHY 2005 10 February 2006 The overall winner of the 2005 Motorcycle Design of the Year has been announced; The winner was the Ducati Hypermotard concept bike, with the runner-up bike being the Yamaha MT-OS. Other bikes which were highly rated by a panel of motorcycle designers included the Yamaha R6, MotoCzysz C1, Aprilia RS125 and the Victory Vision. Presentation of the awards will take place later in the year - full details will be announced on the MDA website.

WASHINGTON - Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have revealed something just as constant as the North Star: a hidden companion. Astronomers now have photographic proof that Polaris, as the bright star and navigational aid is formally called, has two stellar companions. The first, Polaris B, has been known since 1780 and can easily be seen with even a smaller telescope; the presence of the second, Polaris Ab, has been inferred but eluded direct detection because it was close to Polaris and relatively faint. The North Star is a super-giant more than 2,000 times brighter than the sun, while its...

RELEASE: 06-004 By stretching the capabilities of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to the limit, astronomers photographed the close companion to Polaris, known also as the North Star, for the first time. "Hubble's exceptional pointing capabilities combined with the wonderful performance of its instruments allow scientists to see the universe in finer detail than ever before," said Michael Moore, NASA's Hubble program executive. "It is that clear vision that makes these types of images possible," he added. The North Star is thought to be a steady, solitary point of light that guided sailors for ages, but there is more to this...

Julius Caesar might have said he was as constant as the northern star, but it wasn't much of a boast. Over the past two millennia, the star Polaris has brightened by 250 per cent, astronomers announced today.And they can't explain why."It should not be getting that bright that fast," said Edward Guinan, an astronomer at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. "It's not behaving as expected. It's kind of scary."Scientists knew that Polaris was inconstant but in a different way. About every four days, the star increases and decreases ever so slightly in brightness.But the new work is the first to...

In Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," the title character declares, "But I am constant as the Northern Star, of whose true fixed and resting quality there is no fellow in the firmament." In modern astronomical terms, Caesar was saying that he was a flaky, unstable guy. Astronomers have known for some time that Polaris, the North Star, sitting almost directly over the North Pole, is a Cepheid variable, a type of star that is caught in a cycle of bloating and collapsing because it has exhausted its hydrogen fuel. In this unsettled state, Polaris brightens and dims every four days or so,...