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Aquila: Difference between revisions
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(Created page with "Aquila is a constellation in the northern sky. Its name is Latin for 'eagle' and it represents the bird who carried Zeus/Jupiter's thunderbolts in Greco-Roman mythology.Aquila...") |
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Ptolemy catalogued nineteen stars jointly in this constellation and in the now obsolete constellation of Antinous, which was named in the reign of the emperor Hadrian (AD 117–138), but sometimes erroneously attributed to Tycho Brahe, who catalogued twelve stars in Aquila and seven in Antinous.Hevelius determined twenty-three stars in the first[3] and nineteen in the second.[ | Ptolemy catalogued nineteen stars jointly in this constellation and in the now obsolete constellation of Antinous, which was named in the reign of the emperor Hadrian (AD 117–138), but sometimes erroneously attributed to Tycho Brahe, who catalogued twelve stars in Aquila and seven in Antinous.Hevelius determined twenty-three stars in the first[3] and nineteen in the second.[ | ||
The Greek Aquila is probably based on the Babylonian constellation of the Eagle (MUL.A.MUSHEN), which is located in the same area as the Greek constellation. | The Greek Aquila is probably based on the Babylonian constellation of the Eagle (MUL.A.MUSHEN), which is located in the same area as the Greek constellation. | ||
==Deep Sky Objects== | |||
Three interesting planetary nebulae lie in Aquila: | |||
* NGC 6804 shows a small but bright ring | |||
* NGC 6781 which bears some resemblance with the Owl Nebula in Ursa Major. | |||
* NGC 6751: also known as the Glowing Eye, a planetary nebula | |||
* More deep-sky objects: | |||
* NGC 6709 is a loose open cluster containing approximately 40 stars, which range in magnitude from 9 to 11. It is approximately 3000 light-years from Earth. It has an overall magnitude of 6.7 and is approximately 9100 light-years from Earth. NGC 6709 appears in a rich Milky Way star field and is classified as a Shapley class d and Trumpler class III 2 m cluster. These designations mean that it does not have many stars, is loose, does not show greater concentration at the center, and has a moderate range of star magnitudes.[5] | |||
* NGC 6755: an open cluster of 7.5m; it is made up of about a dozen stars with magnitudes 12 through 13 | |||
* NGC 6760: a globular cluster of 9.1m | |||
* NGC 6749: an open cluster | |||
* NGC 6778: planetary nebula | |||
* NGC 6741: planetary nebula | |||
* NGC 6772: planetary nebula | |||
* Aquila also holds some extragalactic objects. One of them is what may be the largest single mass concentration of galaxies in the Universe known, the Hercules–Corona Borealis Great Wall. It was discovered in November 2013 and has the size of 10 billion light years. It is the biggest and the most massive structure in the Universe known. | |||