UC
Berkeley students now can wish on their own star, just in time
for Saturday's Big Game
14
Nov 2000
By
Kathleen Scalise, Media Relations
A
print quality image of the star system and accompanying photo
credit information is available for download
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Albireo,
a visual binary star in the constellation Cygnus. (Credit:
Weidong Li and Alex Filippenko, UC Berkeley)
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Berkeley
- At the Big Game football match this Saturday between the
University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University,
a new official campus symbol will be announced - one designed
to encourage UC Berkeley students, both on and off the field,
to "strive for the stars."
Following
in the footsteps of the colors blue and gold, the Golden Bear
and Oski, the campus mascot, comes UC Berkeley's own star
system. Located in the Cygnus constellation, the double star
Albireo - consisting of one blue and one gold star that circle
endlessly- has been adopted by UC Berkeley's Student Senate.
"We're
calling it the Cal Star," said Lauren Bausch, a UC Berkeley
undergraduate and author of the recent UC Berkeley Student
Senate bill resolving to officially adopt the star. Bausch
said UC Berkeley students always have sought to "strive for
the stars" and now will know just which star to reach for.
During
late autumn and early winter months, the constellation Cygnus,
or the Swan, can be found far in the west during the first
few hours of the night, said UC Berkeley astronomy professor
Alex Filippenko. He first proposed Albireo as the Cal Star
to his astronomy students years ago, but it wasn't until this
fall that one of his students, Bausch, decided to do something
about it.
"It looks
like a cross," Filippenko said of Cygnus. "In fact, the constellation
is also known as the Northern Cross. Albireo is the bottom
star of the cross and the fifth brightest."
Filippenko
said the other stars of the cross easily are seen in a "darkish"
sky. While he said Albireo is a bit harder to find, it still
is visible to the eye unless the sky is cloudy or overly brightened
by city lights.
Albireo,
also known as Beta Cygni, is located 385 light years from
Earth. It has been known since antiquity. Characterizing the
constellation as a bird began in the Middle East and continued
in ancient Greece and Rome. Cygnus was named after characters
in classic mythology that were transformed into swans. The
Albireo star system heads the swan constellation.
Filippenko
said Albireo is actually a triple star, as the yellow star
is itself binary, but telescopes on the ground have a difficult
time distinguishing the two components of the yellow star,
yielding the blue and gold effect. Of what can be seen, the
blue star is hotter and the gold star is larger. The system's
colors were recognized at least as early as 1840.
Besides
the Cal Star, other official campus symbols include the blue
and gold colors and the university seal. The Golden Bear and
Oski may never have been officially adopted, said Steven Finacom,
a campus planning analyst and keeper of much UC Berkeley history,
but, he said, "they have become ubiquitous through common
usage."
The student
senate bill about the Cal Star met positive reaction from
students and passed nearly unanimously, said Bausch, a 19-year-old
sophomore from Paso Robles, Calif. She added that Astronomy
10, an introductory class taught by Filippenko, is one of
the campus's most popular undergraduate courses. Filippenko
worked with the students to make the star adoption possible.
###
A
print quality image of the star system and accompanying photo
credit information is available for download.
.
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