Скачать или смотреть The Shape of Leo in Three Dimensions

This visualization reveals the stars of the Leo constellation in three dimensions. Watch as the familiar pattern on the sky distorts into a whole new perspective.

The sequence begins with a view of Leo in the night sky. The head and mane of the lion are outlined by a curving arc of stars including Algenubi, Rasalas, Adhafera, and Algieba. Extending this arc down to the bright star Regulus creates the asterism known as "The Sickle". The hindquarters of the lion are represented by a triangle of bright stars, with Denebola at the tail. Regulus and Denebola are, respectively, the 21st and 60th brightest stars in the night sky.

To the right of Leo is the open star cluster known as the Beehive Cluster. Also called Messier 44, it one of the closest open clusters to Earth (about 550 ly away in the constellation Cancer). This grouping of about a thousand stars remains visible for the whole duration of the constellation spin.

Early in the spin, the bright star Arcturus (37 ly away in the constellation Bootes) crosses the screen from left to right. The farthest star in the Leo constellation is Eta Leonis, a blue supergiant at an approximate distance of 1,200 ly from the Sun. Just as the spin completes, the nearby bright star Procyon (11 ly away in the constellation Canis Minor), passes off screen on the lower right.

This visualization features over 11 million stars down to a magnitude of 13.5 across the sky. The positions, colors, and luminosities are based on the Gaia and Hipparcos star catalogs, complemented by the HYG Database, which includes data from the Yale and Gliese catalogs. Insterstellar dust is visualized using the Edenhofer map out to adistance of 1.25 kiloparsecs (~4,000 ly) from the Sun. The rest of the Milky Way plane is recreated using simulated spiral galaxy data for stars and dust from the Horizon GalMer database.

Credits:
Visualization: Christian Nieves, Frank Summers (STScI)
Motion Graphics: Ralf Crawford (STScI)
Music: Christian Nieves (STScI)

Data:
Gaia DR3 – ESA/Gaia/DPAC
Hipparcos Catalog – ESA
HYG-Database (v4.1) – Astronexus CC BY-SA 4.0
Edenhofer et al (2023). A Parsec-Scale Galactic 3D Dust Map out to 1.25 kpc from the Sun -- Dataset for the 1.25 kpc 3D Dust Map and the 2 kpc 3D Dust Map (v1.0.2) [Data set]. Zenodo.
Horizon GalMer Database – Chilingarian I. V., Di Matteo P., Combes F., Melchior A.-L., Semelin B., 2010, A&A, 518, A61

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