Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cygnus (Cyg)  ·  Contains:  The star 61Cyg
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The Flight of 61 Cygni, gigiastro

The Flight of 61 Cygni

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Description

61 Cygni, the Flying Star of Giuseppe Piazzi (discoverer of Ceres, the first asteroid), is a double star whose components orbit in about 680 years around a common center of gravity; the double star owns a considerable proper motion compared to the distant background stars, also due to the relative closeness to Earth of 11 light-years.

The pair was deprived of the surrounding star field in four astrometric processed images and, in order to have a clear background in which to insert the pictures of 61 Cygni to obtain the moving effect, the background was derived by stitching together 2 portions of the same star field, one taken from POSS 1 and the other one from POSS 2 that 61 Cygni, respectively, had yet to cross and already had crossed.

The 98 years flight "began" in 1916 with the image of Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff (Arizona), that also photographed the pair in 1948. In 1986 and 2014 it was photographed from Venice (Italy).

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The Flight of 61 Cygni, gigiastro