BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy Vulpecula - the Little Fox *new*

Vulpecula isn't a well known constellation, and its stars are dim. Yet it's interesting. It contains both the first planetary nebula and the first pulsar ever discovered, a handful of exoplanets, and part of the biggest structure in the known Universe.

Vulpecula - the Little Fox

Star cluster and stellar nursery NGC 6823 in the constellation Vulpecula is about 6000 light years away. It's a young cluster formed about two million years ago, and contains a number of bright young blue stars. There are younger stars forming where we see the pillars of gas and dust. The cluster is around 50 light years across.

Image Credit & Copyright: Donald P. Waid (Waid Observatory)

Messier 27 (the Dumbell Nebula) is one of the brightest planetary nebulae in the sky. If you can find the constellation Vulpecula, you can see the nebula with binoculars.

Image Credit & Copyright: Bill Snyder (Bill Snyder Photography)

The Coat Hanger in Vulpecula is an interesting asterism. It was made more interesting in 2011 when Comet Garradd (C/2009 P1) appeared in the Coat Hanger. The asterism isn't visible to the unaided eye, you need binoculars or a telescope to see it. It's also upsidedown in the northern hemisphere.

Image Credit & Copyright: Rogelio Bernal Andreo

This image isn't galaxy cluster Abell 68, 2.1 billion light years away in the constellation Vulpecula. It's what you can see using Abell 68 as a gravitational lens.

Circled in green are some of the highlights that can be seen. Labels 1 and 2 show two lensed images of the same background galaxy. Label 3 marks a cluster member galaxy, not gravitationally lensed, stripped of its own gas as it plows through the denser intergalactic medium. Label 4 includes many background galaxies imaged as elongated streaks and arcs. Abell 68 itself is some 2.1 billion light-years distant toward the constellation Vulpecula. The central region of the cluster covered in the Hubble view spans over 1.2 million light-years.

Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage/ESA-Hubble Collaboration - Acknowledgment: Nick Rose
Description: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)