Star Systems and the Red Star of Spring

By Matthew Johnson

A prominent spring constellation is Leo. It is one of the star groups found crossing the sky from east to west during May’s later hours and is located along the ecliptic, below and to the left of Orion’s belt. The brightest star in the constellation is Regulus—not just a single star but a group of 4 stars, a quadruple star system. So, Regulus is classified as a star but, more correctly, a star system.

The system is composed of a main large blue-white star that is gravitationally bound with three tinier stars. As it is 79 light years (464 trillion miles) away, the four-star Regulus system appears to the naked eye as a single star. A moderate telescope will separate Regulus from some of its smaller companions. The poet Robert Frost describes visually separating star systems into individual stars with a telescope in his poem “The Star Splitter.”

Our eight-planet solar system orbiting a single star, our sun, is certainly familiar. However, in our galaxy, planetary systems with a single sun are in a minority. More than half of all stars in the sky have one or more partner stars, just like Regulus, and many of these multiple star systems have planets.
An example of a binary star system hosting an orbiting planet is displayed in the fictional scene from the 1977 Star Wars movie “A New Hope,” where Luke Skywalker watches two suns setting from his home planet of Tatooine. This is beautifully depicted by the filmmaker George Lucas.
Considering that there are more stars than meet the eye, how many stars are there? With recent information gained from the Webb telescope, astronomers estimate that the Milky Way contains considerably more than 100 billion stars, and there are billions of galaxies in the universe.
Further, if galaxies are roughly the same size, then according to NASA’s latest estimate, there are more than one septillion stars in the universe. That is a one followed by 24 zeros! For every grain of sand on Earth’s beaches, stars outnumber sand by a factor of 100,000 to 300,000 to one. The number of planets associated with this many stars is even greater. This is staggering.

Meteor Showers
The May Eta Aquarids meteor shower, formed by Earth passing through the old dust trail of Halley’s comet, is not favored for viewing this May. It is an event best viewed from the equator and further south. The meteors radiate from the constellation Aquarius. Maximum activity occurs the night of May 4. The bright light of a waning gibbous moon will severely affect viewing this shower.

Planets
May is all about Venus and Jupiter. The two planets are paired in the west and can be found setting around 8:15 to 8:30 p.m. On May 1 they form a triangle with the star Sirius, the brightest star in the heavens. On May 18 the moon stands next to Venus. On May 19 the moon floats between Venus and Jupiter and on May 20 it stands above Jupiter. Mars appears before dawn in mid-May. On May 14 the moon stands above it around 5 a.m. (Saturn will also be visible to the right of the moon on this date and time).

Jupiter is visually discernable from Venus by its deep yellow glow. Using small binoculars, one can always see the prominent Gallian moons lined up around Jupiter’s equatorial region. Around 10 p.m. on May 30, the rising moon will be found to the right of the giant red star Antares in Scorpio. Antares rising is a marker of springtime.

Moon Phases
May 1: Full moon; Flower Moon.
May 9: Last quarter.
May 16: New moon (no visible moon).
May 23: First quarter.
May 31: Full moon; Blue Moon.
The term blue moon has numerous

historic sources. According to “Brittanica,” the term originated from the 16th-century expression “the moon is blue,” meaning something that was impossible. However, after the eruption of the volcano Krakatoa in Indonesia in 1883, people around the world reported seeing colored sunsets and a moon that appeared blue. With this possible, but uncommon, occurrence, “once in a blue moon” came to mean rare, rather than impossible.

The term is also attributed to a more modern American source. In 1946, astronomer James Pruett was supposedly the first to call the second full moon in a month a blue moon. The period from one full moon to the next is about 29.5 days. So, when two full moons occur in the same month, the first is always on the first or second day of the month and the second is on the 30th or 31st day. Naturally, a month with 31 days has a much better chance of hosting a blue moon.