1.4 KiB
| name | created_by | created_date | updated_by | updated_date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aquarius | skybber | 2021-06-01 19:55:32.313056 | skybber | 2022-01-17 18:21:11.926783 |
A large, faint constellation of the animal, lying almost entirely in the southern sky, below Pegasus, between Pisces and Capricorn. It consists only of medium-bright and fainter stars, rather irregularly arranged so that they do not form any bright shape. The Sun's passage through Aquarius marked the arrival of rainy weather for the ancient peoples of the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East. The Sun currently passes through Aquarius from February 16 to March 11, making it a typical constellation for autumn evenings. To the naked eye, you may be struck by a small group of orange stars in the constellation known as ψ AQR, which gives the false impression of a loose star cluster of sorts, and the so-called pitcher or "Aquarius pitcher" lying on the celestial equator, represented by four stars: η, π, γ and ζ Aquarii arranged in a Y. Only a few other stars deserve special attention. Because the constellation lies further from the Milky Way, it is naturally poor in star clusters and nebulae. It does, however, contain three interesting globular clusters, two of which are in Messier's catalogue, and two well-known planetary clusters, Saturn and Helix. The most numerous deep-sky objects are galaxies, but most of them are of low luminosity.
