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Description

What are constellations and make constellation viewer out of a toilet roll tube

Resources

Strip of card, 1.5 inches by 8 inches (~ 4cm by 20cm)
Something to poke holes through the card (sewing pin may do)
Something to protect your work surface (such as a chopping board)
2 drinking straws (or roll a piece of paper into a small tube)
Cardboard tube (toilet roll tube would be perfect)
Pencil
Ruler
Tape
Scissors

Instructions

What are constellations?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/greek-myth-constellations-stargazing-october-astronomy-a9126376.html
Our ancestors – and the Greeks in particular, pinned their myths and legends onto the sky to help them remember and recognise the constellations, which Greek navigators at sea, and farmers on land, used to work out the time of year and location. Never mind if Pegasus didn’t look like a horse.
Greek myths are full of lust, power, manipulation, and magic. What the autumn skies lack in beauty, they make up for in story-making – played out by constellations that are on view in October.
This is the legend of Perseus and Andromeda. To find Andromeda, you find the constellation, Pegasus. You’ll then spot a line of faint stars at its left-hand end. It takes enormous imagination to see these stars as a maiden chained to a rock – about to be gobbled up by a sea monster – but there it is.
How did she get there? Her mother Cassiopeia, the Queen, boasted to the sea-god Poseidon that Andromeda was more beautiful than all the sea-nymphs. Not a good move. The enraged god sent a sea-monster, Cetus, to ravage the kingdom. Every night Cassiopeia and her husband Cepheus had to sacrifice a youngster to the behemoth.
But it wasn’t enough for Poseidon: he wanted Andromeda. That’s how she ended up on the sacrificial rock, with the ravening Cetus bearing down on her.
Enter Perseus. In myth, he was the son of beautiful Danae and the god Zeus. The local king had his eye on Danae, but young Perseus knew that the man’s intentions were not honourable. So the king banished Perseus to one of the furthest corners of the Earth with the instruction: Kill Medusa, the Gorgon.
There were three Gorgons, all sisters. Two were immortal, Medusa was not. The Gorgons had snakes for hair, and a gaze that would turn an onlooker to stone.
Perseus planned his campaign carefully. He would have to be invisible; need winged sandals in order to fly; and have a reflective shield to point at Medusa’s face, so as not to look at it directly. It worked! Perseus beheaded Medusa, and drops of her blood spilled out to form Pegasus the winged horse.
On his way back home, Perseus encountered another challenge: a beautiful maiden about to become a sea-monster’s dinner. He swooped in, and beheaded the snarling Cetus with one stroke.
Nothing for it but to marry and live happily ever after right? Wrong! Perseus had another obstacle to face. Andromeda’s scheming mother, Cassiopeia, had lined up a more suitable husband for her daughter. Perseus burst into the wedding ceremony accompanied by 200 supporters. Perseus put up a good struggle, but then he had a lightbulb moment. He grabbed Medusa’s head, and – hey presto! – the whole gang turned to stone.

1.Get your strip of card and your tube. Place the card on the table and put the end of the tube on the card and draw round it so you have several circles next to each other along the card.
2.Measure 1 inch (2.5 cm) from the end of your tube, and make enough marks all the way round to guide you as you’re going to be cutting this piece off
3.Cut along your marks so you now have a small tube and a longer tube
4.Place a straw either side of the longer tube and tape them in place, making sure that they stick out at the same end
5.Put the smaller tube you cut out earlier between the straws so it lines up with the longer tube, but make sure there is a gap between them (about 1cm), and tape it in place
6.Get your strip of card and make sure it’ll fit through the gap between the 2 tubes you tapes to your straws. If it doesn’t trim the strip
7.Put the strip of card on the chopping board so you can see the circles you drew earlier
8.At the wedge of each circle write the name of the constellation you’re going to put in that circle
9.Draw the constellations with your pencil and mark where you’ll need to poke a hole (where there’s a star)
10.Use something sharp to poke the holes through your card to make your constellations
11.You can feed your constellations through your tube and hold them up so you can see the ‘stars’ (don’t look directly at a light or the sun).

Tags

• art
• astronomer
• astronomy
• online

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