Aquarius
Aquarius is a Zodiacal constellation otherwise known as the Water Bearer. It is one of the 48 Greek constellations originally described by the 2nd century astronomer Claudius Ptolemy (Wikipedia). Aquarius remains one of the 88 modern constellations defined by the International Astronomical Union (Wikipedia).
Aquarius (abbrev. = Aqr; genitive = Aquarii) covers 980 square degrees or 2.38% of the celestial sphere making it the 10th largest constellation. It contains 172 stars brighter than apparent magnitude 6.5, the brightest star being Sadalsud. See the Aquarius Star Chart for a figure illustrating this constellation including the identification of its brighter stars.
For more information see the entries for Aquarius at Wikipedia and U. Wisconsin. For a chart of Aquarius, see Aqr (IAU).
Technical Details
- Object: Aquarius
- Date/Time: 2012 Dec 03 at 02:09 UTC
- Location: Bifrost Astronomical Observatory, Portal, AZ
- Mount: Losmandy G-11 German Equatorial Mount
- Lens: Nikkor AI 35mm f/2
- Camera: Canon EOS 550D (Rebel T2i)
- Field of View: 35.3° x 24.0° at 24.5 arc-sec/pixel (web version: 138 arc-sec/pixel)
- Exposure: 360s, f/4, ISO 800 and 120s, f/4, ISO 800 with Cokin A840 Diffusion Filter
- File Name: Aqr-01w.jpg
- Processing (Adobe Camera Raw): Color Balance, Vignetting, Noise Reduction
- Processing (Photoshop CS5): Average Layers, Curves, opacity (with diffusion image)
- Original Image Size: 3454 × 5179 pixels (17.9 MP); 11.5" x 17.3" @ 300 dpi
- Rights: Copyright 2012 by Fred Espenak. All Rights Reserved. See: Image Licensing.