The Sagitta Constellation: More and More Milky Way Stars

The Sagitta Constellation: More and More Milky Way Stars

Astrophotographer Greg Parker:

"In early October of 2024, two consecutive clear, moonless nights allowed me to capture the [first] image, the entire constellation of Sagitta. The grouping of four arrow-shaped stars lies in an inconspicuous part of the autumn sky (Northern Hemisphere), between the constellations of Aquila and Vulpecula. None of the stars that make up Sagitta are brighter than 3rd magnitude, so this constellation is often overlooked by stargazers. However, it lies in a dense part of the Milky Way. To get an idea just how densely packed the stars are here, I took a large crop out of part of the top image and magnified it 4x to get the [second] image. Incredibly, it's still jam-packed with stars! If you look closely at this cropped image, you can see where it was taken from in the main image—bottom, right of center. It's hard to imagine that every speck you see is a star."

Sagitta is a dim but distinctive constellation in the northern sky. Its name is Latin for 'arrow', not to be confused with the significantly larger constellation Sagittarius 'the archer'. It was included among the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations defined by the International Astronomical Union. Although it dates to antiquity, Sagitta has no star brighter than 3rd magnitude and has the third-smallest area of any constellation.

Gamma Sagittae is the constellation's brightest star, with an apparent magnitude of 3.47. It is an aging red giant star 90% as massive as the Sun that has cooled and expanded to a radius 54 times greater than it. Delta, Epsilon, Zeta, and Theta Sagittae are each multiple stars whose components can be seen in small telescopes. V Sagittae is a cataclysmic variable—a binary star system composed of a white dwarf accreting mass of a donor star that is expected to go nova and briefly become the most luminous star in the Milky Way and one of the brightest stars in our sky around the year 2083. Two star systems in Sagitta are known to have Jupiter-like planets, while a third—15 Sagittae—has a brown dwarf companion.

Image details: The main image is a 2-frame mosaic taken with the 2x Canon 200mm prime lenses and the 2x ASI 2600MC Pro OSC CMOS cameras, at a temperature of -5C. Each frame was a total of 5-hours exposure time using 10-minute sub-exposures.

Image & Caption Credit: Greg Parker
New Forest Observatory, U. K. Coordinates: 50.819444, -1.59

Image Date: October 2024
Release Date: Jan. 17, 2025

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