Vulpecula is a northern constellation whose name means the Little Fox in Latin. Hold your mouse cursor over the image to see constellation figures, boundaries, and star identifications. Vulpecula does not contain any stars brighter than fourth magnitude, so it is relatively obscure, but it is located in the middle of the Summer Triangle, in a rich section of Milky Way and dark nebulae. Alpha Vulpeculae is Anser, or Lucida Anseris, a magnitude 4.4 spectral-class M red-giant star located 297 light-years away from us. It forms an optical binary with 8 Vulpeculae, which, at magnitude +5.8, is located 484 lights years away. These two stars do not physically interact, they just happen to lie along the same line of sight. They have an apparent separation of 7 arcminutes. Planetary nebula Messier 27, the Dumbbell Nebula, at lower left in the image, is the largest and brightest planetary nebula in the sky. The asterism Collinder 399 lies at lower right. Red emission nebula NGC 6820 lies just to the left of the center. Large dark nebula LDN 772 lies halfway between Alpha and 1 Vulpeculae. Vulpecula was introduced by the Polish astronomer Johannes Hevelius in the 17th century C.E. (Common Era). It is the 55th largest of today's 88 modern constellations, covering 268 square degrees of sky. North is to the top in the above image.
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