2.0 KiB
| name | created_by | created_date | updated_by | updated_date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capricornus | skybber | 2021-06-03 15:44:57.015790 | skybber | 2022-02-11 15:54:02.820234 |
A faint zodiac constellation of the southern sky between Aquarius and Sagittarius. The constellation consists of faint stars forming a distorted triangle shape, none brighter than 3mag. It is reached by the conjunction of two bright stars, Vega and Altair. Nearby are other water constellations: Aquarius, Pisces, Cetus and Southern Pisces - the Sun's passage through this region marked a period of rainy weather in the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. Because Capricornus is very good at jumping on rocks, it made its way up into the sky as a symbol of the rising Sun - the return of longer days and a harbinger of spring. In fact, 2,000 years ago, the Sun passed through Capricornus at the time of the winter solstice, was lowest in the sky, and began to rise higher and higher in the celestial vault as it moved to the next constellation. However, this has long been untrue. Due to precession, the Sun passes through the constellation from January 20 to February 15, and at the time of the winter solstice it is in Sagittarius - today the southernmost constellation of the zodiac. However, the sign of Capricornus remains the sign of the winter solstice to this day, and the vertex of the southern hemisphere from which the Sun turns back north is called the vertex of Capricornus.
Although Capricorn is located just east of the rich Milky Way region in Sagittarius and occupies a good portion of the sky, it is surprisingly poor in deepsky objects. The region does, however, contain some beautiful double and multiple stars, suitable for binoculars or small telescopes, and in their wide field of view they can look almost like a loose open star cluster. Capricorn, on the other hand, boasts just one interesting globular cluster - M30. Near the star μ Capricorn, the Berlin astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle found another planet in our solar system - Neptune - in 1846, based on Leverrier's calculations.