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Graphing the Big Dipper Although they look close together from Earth, the stars in the Big Dipper are actually very far apart. They also vary tremendously in their distances from Earth. In this activity, you will graph the stars of the Big Dipper to make these differences clearer. Materials Graphing the Big Dipper handout Graph paper Pencil/Pen Procedure Look at the diagram of the Big Dipper below. The distances listed refer to each star’s approximate distance from Earth. Dubhe Mizar Alioth Alkaid Megrez ez Phecda 1. On your graph paper, create and label the axis in order to graph the distances to each of the stars from Earth. The x-axis of your graph will be the stars. The y-axis will be distance from Earth (in light years). 2. Place the names of the stars along the x-axis in the order they appear on the sketch of the Big Dipper above. 3. Create a bar graph using the distance to each of the seven stars. Example ONLY D i s t a n c e Merak Alkaid Stars of Big Dipper Follow up questions 4. According to your diagram of the Big Dipper, which star appears next to Alkaid when viewed from Earth? ___________________ 5. Is the star you named in 4. the closest star in the Big Dipper to Alkaid? _______ Explain. __________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________ 6. What two factors affect a star’s apparent magnitude? ______________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________ 7. If all the stars in this constellation had the same apparent magnitude, which would appear brightest to people on Earth? Why? ______________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________ 8. What is a light-year? ______________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________ 9. It takes about 8 minutes for light from the sun to reach the Earth. Using the information 1 light year = about 9.5 trillion km or 9.5x1012 km, how many km is the Earth from the sun? SHOW YOUR WORK!