Thursday 2 January 2014

Capella

I like to take photographs of individual stars. Capella is a favourite of mine, it is the brightest object in the constellation of Auriga, it's the sixth brightest star in the night sky and the third brightest star in the northern celestial hemisphere, after Arcturus and Vega. In Winter its high in the sky and an easy target to observe.

This photo is a single 30 second exposure through my 8 inch scope and using a Nikon DSLR. After I posted this photo on Flickr, in the Sky at Night group, I got an email from a researcher at the BBC. He told me he liked my photo a lot and it had been shortlisted for this year's BBC Stargazing Live Calendar. To say I was pleased was an understatement. Unfortunately, in the end it just didn't make the final selection, which was a shame, but I was still very pleased it had been shortlisted. Maybe next time!

An interesting fact about Capella is that it is actually a star system of four stars in two binary pairs. The first pair consists of two bright, large type-G giant stars, both with a radius around 10 times that of the Sun's, in close orbit around each other. The second pair, around 10,000 astronomical units from the first, consists of two faint, small and relatively cool red dwarfs. The Capella system is relatively close, at only 42 light years from Earth.

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