Stargazing - A Graphic Guide to the Heavens

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1 General Information
2 Cover
3 Information
4 Screenshots
5 Technical Specs
6 Links

[edit] General Information

Science Documentary hosted by Roger Liddle and published by Others in 2004 - English narration

[edit] Cover

[edit] Information

On a crystal-clear evening, on vacation perhaps, how often do we contemplate the night sky and promise to learn the stars and constellations? Somehow, we never get round to it. Charts in newspapers look too complicated. Astronomical handbooks are equally daunting.

STARGAZING is the answer - the night sky simply and beautifully mapped, an animated stellar atlas that works from anywhere on Earth. Season-by-season, it signposts and explains. Little by little - like learning a language - the cosmos is comprehensible.

STARGAZING is a glossy work of reference that will last and last. Animated vignettes turn points of light - stars, nebulae, galaxies - into supernovae, flashing pulsars, searing quasars and rotating swarms of 150-billion stars with supermassive black holes at their centres.

The sky is viewed from three latitude bands - from the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere (Japan, Europe, North America), from the tropics, and from the mid-latitudes of the southern hemisphere (Australasia and southern South America). There are no "talking heads", no interviews, no on-screen host.

[edit] Placemarkers

[edit] Northern Latitudes

Northern Hemisphere, Mid-Latitudes
 Jan-Mar 0:00:00
 look north 0:00:20
 look south 0:06:22

Oct-Dec 0:15:28
 look north 0:15:34
 look south 0:21:56

Jul-Sep 0:30:24
 look north 0:30:38
 look south 0:33:54

Apr-Jun 0:44:12
 look north 0:44:28
 look south 0:48:33

[edit] Find your star sign

 Taurus 0:58:44
 Gemini 1:00:38
 Leo 1:01:35
 Virgo 1:03:12
 Libra 1:04:21
 Scorpius 1:04:53
 Sagittarius 1:05:15
 Capricorn 1:05:20
 Aquarius 1:05:26
 Cancer 1:05:37
 Aquarius 1:06:08
 Aries 1:07:14
 Pisces 1:08:09

[edit] Tropics and South

The Equatorial Zone 
 Jan-Mar 0:00:05
 look north 0:00:20
 look south 0:01:33

The Equatorial Zone
 Apr-Jun 0:03:45
 look north 0:03:48
 look south 0:05:28

The Southern Hemisphere, Mid-Latitudes
 Apr-Jun 0:08:27
 look north 0:08:40
 look south 0:11:46

The Southern Hemisphere, Mid-Latitudes
 Jan-Mar 0:18:45
 look north 0:18:50
 look south 0:24:35

The Equatorial Zone
 Oct-Dec 0:28:50
 look north 0:28:58
 look south 0:30:40

The Southern Hemisphere, Mid-Latitudes
 Jul-Sep 0:33:20
 look north 0:33:30
 look south 0:37:58

The Southern Hemisphere, Mid-Latitudes
 Oct-Dec 0:45:05
 look north 0:45:20
 look south 0:49:55
 (narration says 'Southern' Ends 0:54:43)

The Equatorial Zone
 Jul-Sep 0:54:45
 look north 0:54:57
 look south 0:56:27
 (narration says 'Equatorial' Ends 0:58:11)

[edit] How the Sky Works

Getting to know the night sky. Why the stars and constellations appear to move across the heavens. The stellar formations always visible from the northern and southern hemisphere. How to view them through binoculars and work out their positions from a sky chart. Why the planets seem to wander against the sky background sky.

[edit] January to March

The stars and constellations visible during the first quarter of the year. Firstly from the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere, secondly from the tropics, and thirdly from the mid-latitudes of the southern hemisphere. The familiar pattern of Orion, seen both in the northern and southern skies. How the stars in Orion change position on an imaginary spaceflight.

[edit] April to June

A guide to the stars and constellations visible from the northern hemisphere, the tropics and the southern hemisphere. Leo and Virgo in the north. Carina and Centaurus in the south. Why the positions of stars look fixed during a human lifetime but how they move over thousands of years.

[edit] July to September

A tour of the stars and constellations in the northern hemisphere, the tropics and the southern hemisphere. Cygnus and Lyra in the north. Scorpius and Sagittarius in the south. The glorious highlights of the Milky Way - a massive black hole lurking at the Galactic Centre.

[edit] October to December

The stars and constellations visible from the mid latitudes of the northern hemisphere, from the tropics, and from the mid-latitudes of the southern hemisphere. Pegasus and Andromeda in the north. The Magellanic Clouds in the south. How we know by studying galaxies that the Universe is expanding.

[edit] Vagabonds

Comets, asteroids and meteors - the wildcards of the Solar System. Why they hurtle through the sky in apparent random. Originating in the Asteroid Belt, the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud, these icy remnants from the birth of the planets are cosmic vagabonds that both beguile us and threaten us.