Capricornus: The Sea Goat

Object:	Capricornus
Location:	Savoy, MA
Observer:	Roland Roberts
Time:	8 Aug 2002
Camera:	Pentax K1000, 50 mm f/1.4 lens
Film:	Kodak Elite Chrome II, ISO 200
Exposure:	30 minutes at f/2.8

Capricornus lies low in the southern sky as seen from the mid-northern latitudes. It is most easily visible in late-summer (depending on how late you like to stay up, you can see it in early summer). Like most areas away from the Milky Way, Capricornus looks relatively bare. Only one Messier object lies in Capricornus.Capricornus looks to me more like a big “V” or even an open mouth than a sea-goat, but I don’t get to name constellations… At the time this photograph was taken, two planets and several asteroids were visible in the constellation of Capricornus, although only one of the asteroids was bright enough to show up unambiguously in this photo and even then, only when viewing it at the 800-pixel wide size or larger. Uranus is/was a (marginally) naked eye object, provided you know where to look. Neptune requires at least binoculars. Neither are very impressive. However, they can be distinguished from stars using a telescope, something which is true of all the planets except Pluto. Labeled in the picture are the following objects:

• Planets (2): Uranus and Neptune.
• Asteroids (1): 532 Herculina, which unknown to me at the time, was at its brightest for the year at magnitude 10.2. You can find orbital elements for 532 Herculina at Asteroids Dynamic Site web site. David Richards has a couple of frames from early 2000 showing the movement of this asteroid over a 24-hour period. Herculina is a main-belt asteroid.
• Globular Clusters (3): M72, M75, and M30.
• Open Clusters (1): M73.
• Planetary Nebulae (1): NGC 7009.
• Stars (2): Giedi Prima, Giedi Secunda, Dabih, Oculus, Nashira, Bos, Armus, and Dorsum, Castra, Deneb Algedi, and Alshat.

With the exception of M30, all the Messier and NGC object are actually part of Aquarius.

Resources:

• Chris Dolan’s information site on Capricornus .