00:00 [Music]
00:06 January Tonight's Sky - Constellations
00:09 [Music]
00:22 The winter sky is filled with brilliant stars.
00:27 [Music]
00:30 Orion, the hunter, is the centerpiece,
00:33 striding into the night sky with a belt of three stars.
00:38 [Music]
00:48 Above Orion lies a five-sided figure that forms Auriga,
00:53 the charioteer, who was associated with goats.
01:00 Its brightest star is Capella, which is actually a pair of giant yellow stars.
01:07 [Music]
01:15 Auriga balances on a horn of Taurus the bull.
01:25 In Greek mythology, Taurus was seen as the god Zeus in disguise.
01:37 His eye is orange Aldebaran, a red giant star nearing the end of its life.
01:47 A number of the stars that form the bull's V-shaped head
01:51 are part of a star cluster called the Hyades.
01:58 The bull's shoulder is marked by the distinctive Pleiades star cluster,
02:03 also called the Seven Sisters.
02:10 The cluster contains more than 250 stars,
02:15 but only six or seven are visible to the naked eye.
02:26 This view of the Pleiades from the Palomar Observatory
02:30 shows the brightest stars surrounded by a dusty cloud.
02:37 The dust reflects the blue light of these hot stars.
02:45 At the tip of Taurus's horn lies the Crab Nebula.
02:54 The crab is the remains of a star that exploded as a supernova
02:59 observed by Chinese, Japanese, and Arab astronomers in 1054.
03:09 Telescopes on the ground and in space have observed
03:13 different forms of light given off by the Crab Nebula.
03:36 Different wavelengths of visible and invisible light
03:39 reveal details of the supernova remnant.
03:47 Combining information from different wavelengths
03:50 helps us better understand the expanding cloud of glowing gas
03:55 and the spinning neutron star that remains at its core.
04:07 Celestial wonders await you in tonight's sky.
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