Constellation | |
Abbreviation | Aps |
---|---|
Genitive | Apodis |
Pronunciation | /ˈeɪpəs/ , genitive UK: /ˈeɪpə,ˈæpəˌəˈpoʊ-dɪs/ , genitive US: /ˈeɪpə,ˈæpəˌəˈpoʊ-dəs/ [1] |
Symbolism | The Bird-of-Paradise [2] |
Right ascension | 13h 51m 07.5441s – 18h 27m 27.8395s [3] |
Declination | −67.4800797° to −83.1200714° [3] |
Area | 206 sq. deg. (67th) |
Main stars | 4 |
Bayer/Flamsteed stars | 12 |
Stars with planets | 2 |
Stars brighter than 3.00m | 0 |
Stars within 10.00 pc (32.62 ly) | 0 |
Brightest star | α Aps (3.83 m ) |
Messier objects | 0 |
Meteor showers | 0 |
Bordering constellations | Triangulum Australe Circinus Musca Chamaeleon Octans Pavo Ara |
Visible at latitudes between +5° and −90°. Best visible at 21:00 (9 p.m.) during the month of July. |
Apus is a small constellation in the southern sky. It represents a bird-of-paradise, and its name means "without feet" in Greek because the bird-of-paradise was once wrongly believed to lack feet. First depicted on a celestial globe by Petrus Plancius in 1598, it was charted on a star atlas by Johann Bayer in his 1603 Uranometria . The French explorer and astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille charted and gave the brighter stars their Bayer designations in 1756.
The five brightest stars are all reddish in hue. Shading the others at apparent magnitude 3.8 is Alpha Apodis, an orange giant that has around 48 times the diameter and 928 times the luminosity of the Sun. Marginally fainter is Gamma Apodis, another aging giant star. Delta Apodis is a double star, the two components of which are 103 arcseconds apart and visible with the naked eye. Two star systems have been found to have planets.
Apus was one of twelve constellations published by Petrus Plancius from the observations of Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman who had sailed on the first Dutch trading expedition, known as the Eerste Schipvaart , to the East Indies. It first appeared on a 35-cm (14 in) diameter celestial globe published in 1598 in Amsterdam by Plancius with Jodocus Hondius. [4] De Houtman included it in his southern star catalogue in 1603 under the Dutch name De Paradijs Voghel, "The Bird of Paradise", [5] [6] and Plancius called the constellation Paradysvogel Apis Indica; the first word is Dutch for "bird of paradise". Apis (Latin for "bee") is assumed to have been a typographical error for avis ("bird"). [5] [2]
After its introduction on Plancius's globe, the constellation's first known appearance in a celestial atlas was in German cartographer Johann Bayer's Uranometria of 1603. [4] Bayer called it Apis Indica while fellow astronomers Johannes Kepler and his son-in-law Jakob Bartsch called it Apus or Avis Indica. [7] The name Apus is derived from the Greek apous, meaning "without feet". This referred to the Western misconception that the bird-of-paradise had no feet, which arose because the only specimens available in the West had their feet and wings removed. Such specimens began to arrive in Europe in 1522, when the survivors of Ferdinand Magellan's expedition brought them home. [2] The constellation later lost some of its tail when Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille used those stars to establish Octans in the 1750s. [2]
Covering 206.3 square degrees and hence 0.5002% of the sky, Apus ranks 67th of the 88 modern constellations by area. [8] Its position in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere means that the whole constellation is visible to observers south of 7°N. [8] [lower-alpha 1] It is bordered by Ara, Triangulum Australe and Circinus to the north, Musca and Chamaeleon to the west, Octans to the south, and Pavo to the east. The three-letter abbreviation for the constellation, as adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 1922, is "Aps". [9] The official constellation boundaries, as set by Belgian astronomer Eugène Delporte in 1930, [lower-alpha 2] are defined by a polygon of six segments (illustrated in infobox). In the equatorial coordinate system, the right ascension coordinates of these borders lie between 13h 49.5m and 18h 27.3m, while the declination coordinates are between −67.48° and −83.12°. [3]
Lacaille gave twelve stars Bayer designations, labelling them Alpha through to Kappa, including two stars next to each other as Delta and another two stars near each other as Kappa. [7] Within the constellation's borders, there are 39 stars brighter than or equal to apparent magnitude 6.5. [lower-alpha 3] [8] Beta, Gamma and Delta Apodis form a narrow triangle, with Alpha Apodis lying to the east. [12] The five brightest stars are all red-tinged, which is unusual among constellations. [13]
Alpha Apodis is an orange giant of spectral type K3III located 430 ± 20 light-years away from Earth, [14] with an apparent magnitude of 3.8. [15] It spent much of its life as a blue-white (B-type) main sequence star before expanding, cooling and brightening as it used up its core hydrogen. [16] It has swollen to 48 times the Sun's diameter, [17] and shines with a luminosity approximately 928 times that of the Sun, with a surface temperature of 4312 K. [18] Beta Apodis is an orange giant 149 ± 2 light-years away, [14] with a magnitude of 4.2. [15] It is around 1.84 times as massive as the Sun, with a surface temperature of 4677 K. [19] Gamma Apodis is a yellow giant of spectral type G8III located 150 ± 4 light-years away, [14] with a magnitude of 3.87. It is approximately 63 times as luminous the Sun, with a surface temperature of 5279 K. [18] Delta Apodis is a double star, the two components of which are 103 arcseconds apart and visible through binoculars. [20] Delta1 is a red giant star of spectral type M4III located 630 ± 30 light-years away. [14] It is a semiregular variable that varies from magnitude +4.66 to +4.87, [21] with pulsations of multiple periods of 68.0, 94.9 and 101.7 days. [22] Delta2 is an orange giant star of spectral type K3III, [23] located 550 ± 10 light-years away, [14] with a magnitude of 5.3. The separate components can be resolved with the naked eye. [15]
The fifth-brightest star is Zeta Apodis at magnitude 4.8, [13] a star that has swollen and cooled to become an orange giant of spectral type K1III, with a surface temperature of 4649 K and a luminosity 133 times that of the Sun. [18] It is 300 ± 4 light-years distant. [14] Near Zeta is Iota Apodis, a binary star system 1,040 ± 60 light-years distant, [14] that is composed of two blue-white main sequence stars that orbit each other every 59.32 years. Of spectral types B9V and B9.5 V, they are both over three times as massive as the Sun. [24]
Eta Apodis is a white main sequence star located 140.8 ± 0.9 light-years distant. [14] Of apparent magnitude 4.89, it is 1.77 times as massive, 15.5 times as luminous as the Sun and has 2.13 times its radius. Aged 250 ± 200 million years old, this star is emitting an excess of 24 μm infrared radiation, which may be caused by a debris disk of dust orbiting at a distance of more than 31 astronomical units from it. [25]
Theta Apodis is a cool red giant of spectral type M7 III located 350 ± 30 light-years distant. [14] It shines with a luminosity approximately 3879 times that of the Sun and has a surface temperature of 3151 K. [18] A semiregular variable, it varies by 0.56 magnitudes with a period of 119 days [26] —or approximately 4 months. [15] It is losing mass at the rate of 1.1 × 10−7 times the mass of the Sun per year through its stellar wind. Dusty material ejected from this star is interacting with the surrounding interstellar medium, forming a bow shock as the star moves through the galaxy. [27] NO Apodis is a red giant of spectral type M3III that varies between magnitudes 5.71 and 5.95. [28] Located 780 ± 20 light-years distant, it shines with a luminosity estimated at 2059 times that of the Sun and has a surface temperature of 3568 K. [18] S Apodis is a rare R Coronae Borealis variable, an extremely hydrogen-deficient supergiant thought to have arisen as the result of the merger of two white dwarfs; fewer than 100 have been discovered as of 2012. It has a baseline magnitude of 9.7. [29] R Apodis is a star that was given a variable star designation, yet has turned out not to be variable. Of magnitude 5.3, [13] it is another orange giant.
Two star systems have had exoplanets discovered by doppler spectroscopy, and the substellar companion of a third star system—the sunlike star HD 131664—has since been found to be a brown dwarf with a calculated mass of the companion to 23 times that of Jupiter (minimum of 18 and maximum of 49 Jovian masses). [30] HD 134606 is a yellow sunlike star of spectral type G6IV that has begun expanding and cooling off the main sequence. [31] Three planets orbit it with periods of 12, 59.5 and 459 days, successively larger as they are further away from the star. [32] HD 137388 is another star—of spectral type K2IV—that is cooler than the Sun and has begun cooling off the main sequence. [31] Around 47% as luminous and 88% as massive as the Sun, with 85% of its diameter, it is thought to be around 7.4 ± 3.9 billion years old. [33] It has a planet that is 79 times as massive as the Earth and orbits its sun every 330 days at an average distance of 0.89 astronomical units (AU). [34]
The Milky Way covers much of the constellation's area. [36] Of the deep-sky objects in Apus, there are two prominent globular clusters—NGC 6101 and IC 4499—and a large faint nebula that covers several degrees east of Beta and Gamma Apodis. [37] NGC 6101 is a globular cluster of apparent magnitude 9.2 located around 50,000 light-years distant from Earth, [38] which is around 160 light-years across. Around 13 billion years old, it contains a high concentration of massive bright stars known as blue stragglers, thought to be the result of two stars merging. [39] IC 4499 is a loose globular cluster in the medium-far galactic halo; [40] its apparent magnitude is 10.6. [41]
The galaxies in the constellation are faint. [37] IC 4633 is a very faint spiral galaxy surrounded by a vast amount of Milky Way line-of-sight integrated flux nebulae—large faint clouds thought to be lit by large numbers of stars. [38]
Antlia is a constellation in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere. Its name means "pump" in Latin and Greek; it represents an air pump. Originally Antlia Pneumatica, the constellation was established by Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille in the 18th century. Its non-specific (single-word) name, already in limited use, was preferred by John Herschel then welcomed by the astronomic community which officially accepted this. North of stars forming some of the sails of the ship Argo Navis, Antlia is completely visible from latitudes south of 49 degrees north.
Ara is a southern constellation between Scorpius, Telescopium, Triangulum Australe, and Norma. It was one of the Greek bulk described by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations designated by the International Astronomical Union.
Hydrus is a small constellation in the deep southern sky. It was one of twelve constellations created by Petrus Plancius from the observations of Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman and it first appeared on a 35-cm (14 in) diameter celestial globe published in late 1597 in Amsterdam by Plancius and Jodocus Hondius. The first depiction of this constellation in a celestial atlas was in Johann Bayer's Uranometria of 1603. The French explorer and astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille charted the brighter stars and gave their Bayer designations in 1756. Its name means "male water snake", as opposed to Hydra, a much larger constellation that represents a female water snake. It remains below the horizon for most Northern Hemisphere observers.
Piscis Austrinus is a constellation in the southern celestial hemisphere. The name is Latin for "the southern fish", in contrast with the larger constellation Pisces, which represents a pair of fish. Before the 20th century, it was also known as Piscis Notius. Piscis Austrinus was one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations. The stars of the modern constellation Grus once formed the "tail" of Piscis Austrinus. In 1597, Petrus Plancius carved out a separate constellation and named it after the crane.
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.
Crater is a small constellation in the southern celestial hemisphere. Its name is the latinization of the Greek krater, a type of cup used to water down wine. One of the 48 constellations listed by the second-century astronomer Ptolemy, it depicts a cup that has been associated with the god Apollo and is perched on the back of Hydra the water snake.
Musca is a small constellation in the deep southern sky. It was one of 12 constellations created by Petrus Plancius from the observations of Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman, and it first appeared on a celestial globe 35 cm (14 in) in diameter published in 1597 in Amsterdam by Plancius and Jodocus Hondius. The first depiction of this constellation in a celestial atlas was in Johann Bayer's Uranometria of 1603. It was also known as Apis for 200 years. Musca remains below the horizon for most Northern Hemisphere observers.
Horologium is a constellation of six stars faintly visible in the southern celestial hemisphere. It was first described by the French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille in 1756 and visualized by him as a clock with a pendulum and a second hand. In 1922 the constellation was redefined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) as a region of the celestial sphere containing Lacaille's stars, and has since been an IAU designated constellation. Horologium's associated region is wholly visible to observers south of 23°N.
Alpha Apodis is the brightest star in the southern circumpolar constellation of Apus, with an apparent magnitude of approximately 3.825. It had the Greek alpha designation as part of the constellation which Johann Bayer called Apis Indica in his 1603 Uranometria star atlas. With a declination of –79°, this is a circumpolar star for much of the southern hemisphere. It can be identified on the night sky by drawing an imaginary line through Alpha Centauri and Alpha Circini then extending it toward the south celestial pole.
Gamma Apodis (γ Aps, γ Apodis) is the Bayer designation for a star in the southern circumpolar constellation of Apus. From parallax measurements, the distance to this star can be estimated as 150 ± 4 light-years (46.0 ± 1.2 pc). It is visible to the naked eye with an apparent visual magnitude of 3.86. A stellar classification of G9 III identifies it as a giant star in the later stages of its evolution. It is an active X-ray source with a luminosity of 1.607 × 1030 erg s−1, making it one of the 100 strongest stellar X-ray sources within 50 parsecs of the Sun.
Delta Apodis is the Bayer designation for a double star in the southern constellation of Apus.
Zeta Apodis, Latinized from ζ Apodis, is the Bayer designation for a star in the southern constellation of Apus. It has an apparent visual magnitude of +4.78, which is bright enough to allow it to be seen with the naked eye. The distance to this star is known from parallax measurements to be around 293 light-years.
Epsilon Apodis, Latinized from ε Apodis, is the Bayer designation for a star in the southern circumpolar constellation of Apus. It has an apparent visual magnitude of 5.06, which is bright enough to be viewed from dark suburban skies. Based upon parallax measurements, it is at a distance of roughly 640 light-years from Earth.
Eta Apodis, Latinized from η Apodis, is a star in the southern circumpolar constellation Apus. Based upon parallax measurements from the Hipparcos mission, it is approximately 141 light-years from Earth. With an apparent visual magnitude of +4.9, it can be viewed with the naked eye from the southern hemisphere.
R Apodis is a solitary star in the constellation Apus. It is faintly visible to the naked eye as an orange-hued point of light with an apparent magnitude of 5.36. Gaia DR3 parallax measurements imply a distance of 413 light-years and it is drifting closer with a heliocentric radial velocity of −31.2 km/s. At its current distance, R Apodis' brightness is diminished by an interstellar extinction of 0.26 magnitudes and it has an absolute magnitude of −0.22.
Theta Apodis is a variable star in the southern circumpolar constellation of Apus. It is a variable star with an apparent visual magnitude range of 4.65 to 6.20, which, according to the Bortle Dark-Sky Scale, means it is a faint star but visible to the naked eye from dark suburban skies. The distance to Theta Apodis is approximately 350 light-years, based upon parallax measurements made from the Gaia telescope. It is unusual in that it is a red star with a high proper motion.
20 Canum Venaticorum is a single variable star in the northern constellation of Canes Venatici, located 238 light years from the Sun. This object has the variable star designation AO Canum Venaticorum; 20 Canum Venaticorum is the Flamsteed designation. It is visible to the naked eye as a faint, white-hued star with a baseline apparent visual magnitude of +4.72. The star is moving further from the Earth with a heliocentric radial velocity of +9 km/s. Eggen (1971) listed this star as a member of the Hyades Stream.
NO Apodis is a solitary, red hued variable star located in the southern circumpolar constellation Apus. It has an average apparent magnitude of 5.86, allowing it to be faintly seen with the naked eye. The object is relatively far at a distance of 790 light years but is drifting closer with a heliocentric radial velocity −18.3 km/s.
Kappa2 Apodis is the Bayer designation for a double star in the southern circumpolar constellation of Apus. It is located at a distance of roughly 780 light-years from Earth, based upon parallax measurements with a 7% margin of error. The pair have a combined apparent visual magnitude of +5.65, which makes the system faintly visible to the naked eye.
S Apodis, also known as HD 133444 is a variable star located in the southern circumpolar constellation Apus. It has an apparent magnitude ranging from 9.6 to 17, which is below the limit for naked eye visibility. The object is located relatively far at a distance of approximately 15,000 light years based on Gaia DR3 parallax measurements, but it is drifting closer with a heliocentric radial velocity of −75 km/s.