“The Sky This Week” appears every Tuesday. It is written by Ian Clarke, Director of the Hatter Planetarium at Gettysburg College. The planetarium offers regular educational presentations about the stars and the skies; there’s something for early elementary through adults. Field trip requests are welcome. NOTE: field trip request form for 2022-23 is now live. The spring 2023 schedule of free shows is available here. Images created with Stellarium.
According to the International Astronomical Union, there are 88 official constellations in the sky, but humans are quite inventive and have created many other patterns among the stars over the centuries. Technically, these unofficial constellations are known as asterisms. Some of them are very well known, like the Big Dipper, which includes all the brighter stars of the official constellation Ursa Major. Others are less well known, like the three pairs of stars I will am drawing your attention to in this column. These six stars are called the “Three Leaps of the Gazelle,” and the name is reputed to come from medieval Arabic starlore about a startled gazelle leaping away from a pool of water. You can find the stars between Ursa Major and Leo. Once you’ve found the Three Leaps of the Gazelle, you are not likely to forget them.
Ian Clarke is the director of the Hatter Planetarium at Gettysburg College. In addition he has taught introductory astronomy labs and first-year writing there for over 30 years (not necessarily all at the same time). He was educated at Biglerville High School, the University of Virginia, and the University of Iowa. He lives in Gettysburg.