Constellations

The Deep Photographic Guide to the
Constellations

The constellation of the month
AUGUST

Aquila

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Names:

Latin: Aquila (Aql)
English: Eagle Spanish: Águila
German: Adler French: Aigle

The constellation of Aquila is centered in the shown photography (see lines). Sagitta can be seen above and Scutum to the lower right.

In mid of August Aquila culminates at about 22:00 LT (10 pm). The declination of the constellation borders ranges from -12 to +19 degrees. Brightest star is Altair with a visual brightness of 0.8 mag. Together with the stars of Deneb in Cygnus and Vega in Lyra Altair forms the well known summer triangle of the northern summer sky.

The galactic plane crosses the entire field of view. Bright star fields form the visual appearance of the milky way, especially the Scutum star cloud at the lower right corner of the image is a very fine object to the naked eye under a dark sky. In contrast to these star fields are the light absorbing interstellar dust clouds which give the dark patches all along the milky way. A couple of nice galactic deep sky objects for binocular and telescopic observations join the field. In the above photography, taken in May 2000, the 4 mag bright Nova V 1494 Aql of December 1999 has already faded to about tenth magnitude.

© all photographs taken by Till Credner and Sven Kohle