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Asha Prasad
Saint Paul, MN, USA
06/03/2021
10:51 pm

Equipment Details:

iPhone. brightness reduced

Post-processing Details:

Added a black and white filter to improve contrast.

Image Details:

The summer triangle in the Northern sky. Deneb from Cygnus constellation, Vega from the Lyra constellation and Altair from Aquila constellation. Deneb is the farthest star at 2,615 light years. Vega is a 25.05 light years away. Altair is 16.73 light years away. Deneb is one of the brightest stars in spite of it's distance. It is 19 times more massive than sun and 200 times bigger. If it replaced the sun, it's outer edge would reach earth's orbit. Also, both Deneb and Vega will be the North Star in the distant future. 7000 years later, Deneb will be our North Star and 12,000 years later, it will be Vega.

I have been trying to capture this but clouds would cover one of the stars. I finally got this clear shot. IN fact, you can see all the stars of Cygnus and Lyra constellations in this image.

Thanks to Earthsky for the article on summer asterism.

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