Observed Polaris on August 5, 2022

observation

I observed Polaris this evening. Mary and I are in the garage making tie-die shirts. The latest measurement puts the distance of Polaris at 447.6 light years, or around year 1575 at the time of this writing. However, at the time Polaris was receiving light from an earlier Earth. That light would not have travelled 447.6 light years from Earth because both stars are moving.

Messier 47 (Wikipedia) Messier 47 (M47 or NGC 2422) and also known as NGC 2478 is an open cluster in the mildly southern constellation of Puppis. It was discovered by Giovanni Batista Hodierna before 1654 and in his then keynote work re-discovered by Charles Messier on 1771. It was also independently discovered by Caroline Herschel.

Polaris (Wikipedia) Polaris is a star in the northern circumpolar constellation of Ursa Minor. It is designated α Ursae Minoris (Latinized to Alpha Ursae Minoris) and is commonly called the North Star or Pole Star. With an apparent magnitude that fluctuates around 1.98, it is the brightest star in the constellation and is readily visible to the naked eye at night. The position of the star lies less than 1° away from the north celestial pole, making it the current northern pole star. The stable position of the star in the Northern Sky makes it useful for navigation.