Pisces (abbr. Psc, gen. Piscium)
The Fish. Pisces is a large but faint north equatorial constellation
and the twelfth of the zodiac. It lies just
north of Aquarius and Cetus
and is surrounded by Pegasus, Andromeda,
Triangulum, and Aries.
The vernal equinox lies within Pisces. Directly
south of the Square of Pegasus
lies another asterism known as the Circlet, or the Western Fish, formed
by the stars Gamma, b, Theta, Iota, 19, Lambda, and Kappa Psc. The main
deep-sky object of note is the classic type Sc galaxy M74. To see more than
the bright core very good observing conditions are needed; under such circumstances
a scope with an aperture of about 10 cm
reveals a bit of the spiral arms. See below for details of the constellation's
brightest stars.
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Pisces. © 2003 Torsten Bronger.
Copied here under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
|
| Stars brighter than magnitude 4.0 |
| Star |
Visual
mag. |
Abs.
mag. |
Spectral
type |
Distance
(lt-yr) |
R.A. (h m s) |
Dec. ( ° ' '' ) |
| Eta (Alpherg) |
3.62 |
-1.16 |
G8IIIa |
294 |
01 13 29 |
+15 20 45 |
| Gamma |
3.70 |
0.68 |
G7III |
131 |
23 17 10 |
+03 16 56 |
| Alpha (Alrescha) |
3.79 |
0.96 |
A3m+A0pSiSr |
139 |
02 02 03 |
+02 45 49 |
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