Here for a change is the sky of the deep night, looking north.
See the end note about enlarging illustrations.
Draco, besides being the 8th largest constellation by area, is a significant one: its tail winds between the Big Dipper of Ursa Major and the Little Dipper of Ursa Minor, at the tail of which is Polaris, the Pole Star; and its winged body curls around the north ecliptic pole. So when you lok at Polaris, you can feel the sky rotating counter-clockwise around it (Capella on the left is setting), or, really, Earth rotating in the opposite direction; and when you look at the loop of Draco, you can feel the whole solar system rotating clockwise around it.
Why did I want to show you Draco at this time? Because I want to show you some more dragons, or dragon friends and relations.
Clockwise from top left: stegosaurus, triceratops, belemnite, ammonite, ichthyosaurus, iguanodon.
Clockwise from top left: pterosaur, axolotl, tyrannosaurus rex, chamaeleon, bearded dragon.
Iguana climbing one of the old beams of our house. Actually what he’s climbing is a muntin; this type of partition wall is called plank-and-muntin.
These little monsters were knitted by Jane Newby, our neighbor in Lyme Regis, which is the heart of the “Jurassic Coast” where so many ammonites and ichthyosaurs are found. I consider them masterpieces. Each took her “only” up to two evenings to creat. They are going to be sent to three-year-old Madeline in North Carolina, who likes dinosaurs. She already has several dragons, folk art from Mexico, which I may use as models for Draco in the “Pictures in the Sky” poster I hope to make on the basis of the Map of the Starry Sky.
A quiz question might be: Which of these creatures is not extinct?
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ILLUSTRATIONS in these posts are made with precision but have to be inserted in another format. You may be able to enlarge them on your monitor. One way: right-click, and choose “View image”, then enlarge. Or choose “Copy image”, then put it on your desktop, then open it. On an iPad or phone, use the finger gesture that enlarges (spreading with two fingers, or tapping and dragging with three fingers). Other methods have been suggested, such as dragging the image to the desktop and opening it in other ways.
Sometimes I make improvements or corrections to a post after positing it. If you click on the title, rather than on ‘Read more’, I think you are sure to see the latest version.
This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
Back when Thuban in Draco was our pole star, the Milky Way was oriented with the least extreme north and south declinations, in other words the northernmost part, in Cygnus and Cepheus, was as far south as it can get, and vice versa: the southernmost part of the Milky Way, in Carina, was as far north as it can get. People in temperate climes could see the entire galaxy, unlike now. Those were the good old days! But precession is slowly carrying the Milky Way, very similar to our political and social developments, to ever greater extremes of declination.
Quite a lot of them not extinct assuming you mean all the reptiles and amphibians you mentioned.by a strange coincidence I have been looking at extinct dragons today in the university museum in Oxford,well their bones.
Sweet!
Axolotl, chameleon, bearded dragon, and iguana. I would also argue that dragons are not extinct. If you consider them imaginary, then there was never a time at which they ceased to exist. And if you believe in them they’re still alive.
I think it’s the bearded dragon
I believe that would be the axolotl.