Gemini
Gemini is a Zodiacal constellation otherwise known as the Twins. It is one of the 48 Greek constellations originally described by the 2nd century astronomer Claudius Ptolemy (Wikipedia). Gemini remains one of the 88 modern constellations defined by the International Astronomical Union (Wikipedia).
Gemini (abbrev. = Gem; genitive = Geminorum) covers 514 square degrees or 1.25% of the celestial sphere making it the 30th largest constellation. It contains 119 stars brighter than apparent magnitude 6.5, the brightest star being Pollux. See the Gemini Star Chart for a figure illustrating this constellation including the identification of its brighter stars.
For more information see the entries for Gemini at Wikipedia and U. Wisconsin. For a chart of Gemini, see Gem (IAU).
Technical Details
- Object: Gemini
- Date/Time: 2012 Feb 21 at 05:13 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 A830 Diffusion Filter
- File Name: Gem-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.