Andromeda
Andromeda is a Northern Hemisphere constellation otherwise known as the Chained Maiden. It is one of the 48 Greek constellations originally described by the 2nd century astronomer Claudius Ptolemy (Wikipedia). Andromeda remains one of the 88 modern constellations defined by the International Astronomical Union (Wikipedia).
Andromeda (abbrev. = And; genitive = Andromedae) covers 722 square degrees or 1.75% of the celestial sphere making it the 19th largest constellation. It contains 152 stars brighter than apparent magnitude 6.5, the brightest star being Alpheratz. See the Andromeda Chart for a figure illustrating this constellation including the identification of its brighter stars.
For more information see the entries for Andromeda at Wikipedia and U. Wisconsin. For a chart of Andromeda, see And (IAU).
Technical Details
- Object: Andromeda
- Date/Time: 2012 December 03 at 03:00 UTC
- Location: Bifrost Astronomical Observatory, Portal, AZ
- Mount: Losmandy G-11 German Equatorial Mount
- Lens: Nikkor AI 28mm f/2
- Camera: Canon EOS 550D (Rebel T2i)
- Field of View: 43.4° x 29.8° at 30.1 arc-sec/pixel (web version: 169 arc-sec/pixel)
- Exposure: 2 x 360s, f/4, ISO 800 and 120s, f/2.8, ISO 800 with Cokin A840 Diffusion Filter
- File Name: And-01w.jpg
- Processing (Adobe Camera Raw): Vignetting Correction, Lens Distortion Correction, Noise Reduction, White Balance, Curves
- Processing (Photoshop CS5): Average Images, 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.