Coma Berenices
Coma Berenices is a Northern Hemisphere constellation otherwise known as the Berenice's Hair. Originally part of Leo, Caspar Vopel gave it constellation status in 1536 and it also appeared in Johann Bayer's Uranometria (Wikipedia) in 1603. Coma Berenices remains one of the 88 modern constellationsdefined by the International Astronomical Union (Wikipedia).
Coma Berenices (abbrev. = Com; genitive = Comae Berenices) covers 386 square degrees or 0.94% of the celestial sphere making it the 42nd largest constellation. It contains 66 stars brighter than apparent magnitude 6.5, the brightest star being Beta Comae Berenices. See the Coma Berenices Star Chart for a figure illustrating this constellation including the identification of its brighter stars.
For more information see the entries for Coma Berenices at Wikipedia and U. Wisconsin. For a chart of Coma Berenices, see Com (IAU).
Technical Details
- Object: Coma Berenices
- Date/Time: 2012 Feb 27 at 12:17 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: 2 x 240s, f/4, ISO 800 and 120s, f/4, ISO 800 with Cokin A840 Diffusion Filter
- File Name: Com-01w.jpg
- Processing (Adobe Camera Raw): Vignetting 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.