Canis Minor
Canis Minor is a Zodiacal constellation otherwise known as the Lesser Dog, and is one of the two dogs following Orion (see also Canis Major the Great Dog). It is one of the 48 Greek constellations originally described by the 2nd century astronomer Claudius Ptolemy (Wikipedia). Canis Minor remains one of the 88 modern constellations defined by the International Astronomical Union (Wikipedia).
Canis Minor (abbrev. = CMi; genitive = Canis Minoris) covers 183 square degrees or 0.44% of the celestial sphere making it the 71st largest constellation. It contains 47 stars brighter than apparent magnitude 6.5, the brightest star being Procyon (Alpha Canis Minoris). See the Canis Minor Star Chart for a figure illustrating this constellation including the identification of its brighter stars.
For more information see the entries for Canis Minor at Wikipedia and U. Wisconsin. For a chart of Canis Minor, see CMi (IAU).
Technical Details
- Object: Canis Minor
- Date/Time: 2012 Feb 21 at 04:50 UTC
- Location: Bifrost Astronomical Observatory, Portal, AZ
- Mount: Losmandy G-11 German Equatorial Mount
- Lens: Nikkor AI 50mm f/1.8
- Camera: Canon EOS 550D (Rebel T2i)
- Field of View: 25.1° x 16.9° at 17.4 arc-sec/pixel (web version: 98 arc-sec/pixel)
- Exposure: 240s, f/4, ISO 800 and 120s, f/2.8, ISO 800 with Cokin A840 Diffusion Filter
- File Name: CMi-01w.jpg
- Processing (Adobe Camera Raw): Color Balance, Vignetting, Noise Reduction
- Processing (Photoshop CS5): Curves, Layers
- 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.