In my opinion, this is one of the easiest constellations to find - its shape is very suggestive of the marine mammal it represents. There's nothing really noteworthy about it, maybe just Gamma Delphini (the tip of the Dolphin's snout) - an optical double star.
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| The constellation of Delphinus and Altair |
What we lack in astronomical details, we can compensate with trivia :)
- The alpha and beta stars are called Sualocin and Rotanev. There was no apparent meaning to the names until reverend Thomas Webb found out that spelled backwards, the two stand for Nicolaus Venator. And that's the Latinized name of Niccolo Cacciatore, the observer who named them. Apparently, it was all a prank, but the star atlas published in 1814 included the two names without comment.
- In the Chinese culture, the body of the Dolphin forms what is known as the "Good Gourd".
- In Romanian star charts, it's known as "The Little Cross".
In the end, a few "technical" data about this image:
- Canon 450D and an 18-55 mm lens @42 mm
- ISO 1600, f/5.6
- 4x240sec
- stacked with DSS, with a bit of post-processing in Photoshop
- Valea Frumoasei, Romania, on August 26th, 2014
