Ophiuchus
Ophiuchus is a Equatorial constellation otherwise known as the Serpent Bearer. It is one of the 48 Greek constellations originally described by the 2nd century astronomer Claudius Ptolemy (Wikipedia). Ophiuchus remains one of the 88 modern constellations defined by the International Astronomical Union (Wikipedia).
Ophiuchus (abbrev. = Oph; genitive = Ophiuchi) covers 948 square degrees or 2.30% of the celestial sphere making it the 11th largest constellation. It contains 174 stars brighter than apparent magnitude 6.5, the brightest star being Rasalhague. See the Ophiuchus Star Chart for a figure illustrating this constellation including the identification of its brighter stars.
For more information see the entries for Ophiuchus at Wikipedia and U. Wisconsin. For a chart of Ophiuchus, see Oph (IAU).
Technical Details
- Object: Ophiuchus
- Date/Time: 2012 Jun 18 at 08:12 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: 2 x 240s, f/2.8, ISO 800
- File Name: Oph-01w.jpg
- Processing (Adobe Camera Raw): Vignetting Correction, Noise Reduction, White Balance, Curves
- Processing (Photoshop CS5): Average Images, Curves
- 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.