Diagram caption: The constellation Coma Berenices with its brighter stars and surrounding constellations. Coma Berenices is surrounded by (going clockwise from the top): Canes Venatici, Ursa Major, Leo, Virgo and Boötes. This constellation has relatively few bright stars.

Coma Berenices is a northern constellation close to the celestial equator. As such the whole constellation is visible at some point in the year everywhere on Earth except the most antarctic regions. The constellation is best viewed in the evening in the northern hemisphere late spring and southern hemisphere late autumn.

Coma Berenices is home to a large cluster of galaxies known as the Coma Supercluster. However none of the galaxies in this cluster are marked on this diagram as they are too faint to observe with most amateur telescopes. The elliptical galaxy M85 and the spiral galaxy M100 are members of the nearer Virgo cluster of galaxies. These are marked with red ellipses as are the even nearer M64 and NGC 4565, both of which are spiral galaxies. The globular cluster M53, marked here with a yellow circle with a plus sign superimposed on it, also lies in Coma Berenices.

The y-axis of this diagram is in degrees of declination with north as up and the x-axis is in hours of right ascension with east to the left. The sizes of the stars marked here relate to the star's apparent magnitude, a measure of its apparent brightness. The larger dots represent brighter stars. The Greek letters mark the brightest stars in the constellation. These are ranked by brightness with the brightest star being labeled alpha, the second brightest beta, etc., although this ordering is not always followed exactly. The dotted boundary lines mark the IAU's boundaries of the constellations and the solid green lines mark one of the common forms used to represent the figures of the constellations. Neither the constellation boundaries, nor the lines joining the stars appear on the sky. The blue line at the bottom right of the diagram marks the ecliptic.

Diagram credit: Adapted by the IAU Office of Astronomy for Education from the original by the IAU and Sky & Telescope. Bildnachweisbindung

Diagram translation status: Not yet approved by a reviewer
Zugehörige Glossarbegriffe: Deklination , Ekliptik , Elliptische Galaxie , Galaxienhaufen , Himmelskoordinaten , Jungfrau , Löwe , Rektaszension (RA) , Scheinbare Helligkeit , Spiralgalaxie , Sternbild
Categories: Naked Eye Astronomy

Diagram license: Creative Commons Namensnennung 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons Namensnennung 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) icons