1.4 KiB
| name | created_by | created_date | updated_by | updated_date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lacerta | skybber | 2021-06-29 07:08:38.734450 | skybber | 2021-06-29 07:08:38.734687 |
A faint minor constellation of the northern sky, lying on the edge of the Milky Way between Swan, Pegasus, Cepheus and Andromeda. The northern part is circumpolar in our latitudes, southernmost except for northern Europe. This constellation consists only of a zigzag chain of faint stars denoted by Arabic numerals, so that the Lizard is rather faint. Since its northern half lies in the Milky Way, it contains several open clusters suitable for small telescopes. The constellation is interesting because three novae were observed in it in the 20th century: in 1910, 1936, and 1950. The 1936 one (CP Lacertae) flared in the northernmost part of the constellation and was known as "Nova Lacertae". It was discovered on June 16 of the same year by the Czech astronomer Záviš Bochníček, who also worked in Slovakia. At the time of the flare, it reached a brightness of 2.2mag in three days, which was 175,000 times its original brightness and 300,000 times the brightness of the Sun. It was a typical example of a so-called fast nova. To this day, it has become a faint white dwarf of 14.8mag, unobservable with ordinary amateur telescopes. It's 5,400 light years away. Nova 1910 (DI Lac) reached a brightness of 4.3mag. The faintest of these was the 1950 nova (DK Lac), which brightened to 5mag.
