A Bayer designation is a stellar designation in which a specific star is identified by a Greek or Latin letter followed by the genitive form of its parent constellation's Latin name. The original list of Bayer designations contained 1,564 stars. The brighter stars were assigned their first systematic names by the German astronomer Johann Bayer in 1603, in his star atlas Uranometria. Bayer catalogued only a few stars too far south to be seen from Germany, but later astronomers supplemented Bayer's catalog with entries for southern constellations.
A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object.
A Flamsteed designation is a combination of a number and constellation name that uniquely identifies most naked eye stars in the modern constellations visible from southern England. They are named for John Flamsteed who first used them while compiling his Historia Coelestis Britannica.
Pisces is a constellation of the zodiac. Its vast bulk – and main asterism viewed in most European cultures per Greco-Roman antiquity as a distant pair of fishes connected by one cord each that join at an apex – are in the Northern celestial hemisphere. Its old astronomical symbol is (♓︎). Its name is Latin for "fishes". It is between Aquarius, of similar size, to the southwest and Aries, which is smaller, to the east. The ecliptic and the celestial equator intersect within this constellation and in Virgo. The Sun passes directly overhead of the equator, on average, at approximately this point in the sky, at the March equinox.
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.
Taurus is one of the constellations of the zodiac and is located in the northern celestial hemisphere. Taurus is a large and prominent constellation in the Northern Hemisphere's winter sky. It is one of the oldest constellations, dating back to the Early Bronze Age at least, when it marked the location of the Sun during the spring equinox. Its importance to the agricultural calendar influenced various bull figures in the mythologies of Ancient Sumer, Akkad, Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Its old astronomical symbol is (♉︎), which resembles a bull's head.
107 Piscium is a single star in the constellation of Pisces. 107 Piscium is the star's Flamsteed designation. John Flamsteed numbered the stars of Pisces from 1 to 113, publishing his Catalogus Britannicus in 1725. He accidentally numbered 107 Piscium twice, as he also allocated it the designation of 2 Arietis. This star is faintly visible to the naked eye with an apparent visual magnitude that has been measured varying between 5.14 and 5.26. However, that finding of variation was not confirmed by subsequent observations and is most likely spurious data. It is located at a distance of about 24.8 light years away from the Sun. 107 Piscium is drifting closer to the Sun with a radial velocity of −33.6, and is predicted to come as close as 15.4 light-years in around 135,800 years.
An asterism is an observed pattern or group of stars in the sky. Asterisms can be any identified pattern or group of stars, and therefore are a more general concept than the 88 formally defined constellations. Constellations are based on asterisms, but unlike asterisms, constellations outline and today completely divide the sky and all its celestial objects into regions around their central asterisms. For example, the asterism known as the Big Dipper or the Plough comprises the seven brightest stars in the constellation Ursa Major. Another asterism is the triangle, within the constellation of Capricornus.
101 Piscium is a star in the zodiac constellation of Pisces, located around 1,400 light years away from the Sun. This appears as a dim, blue-white hued star near the lower limit of visibility to the naked eye at an apparent visual magnitude of 6.23. It is a suspected variable star with the designation NSV 559; 101 Piscium is the Flamsteed designation. The star is moving closer to the Earth with a heliocentric radial velocity of −10 km/s.
Telescopium Herschelii, also formerly known as Tubus Hershelli Major, is a former constellation in the northern celestial hemisphere. Maximilian Hell established it in 1789 to honour Sir William Herschel's discovery of the planet Uranus. It fell out of use by the end of the 19th century. θ Geminorum at apparent magnitude 4.8 was the constellation's brightest star.
The Catasterismi or Catasterisms is a lost work by Eratosthenes of Cyrene. It was a comprehensive compendium of astral mythology including origin myths of the stars and constellations. Only a summary of the original work survives, called the Epitome Catasterismorum, by an unknown author sometimes referred to as pseudo-Eratosthenes.
Omega Piscium is a star approximately 106 light years away from Earth, in the constellation Pisces. It has a spectral type of F4IV, meaning it is a subgiant/dwarf star, and it has a temperature of 6,600 kelvins. It may or may not be a close binary star system. Variations in its spectrum were once interpreted as giving it an orbital period of 2.16 days, but this claim was later debunked as false. It is 20 times brighter than the Sun and is 1.8 times greater in mass, if it is a single star.
35 Piscium is a triple star system in the northern constellation Pisces, located about 250 light years away from the Sun. Because it is a variable star, it has been given the variable star designation UU Piscium; 35 Piscium is the Flamsteed designation. This system is faintly visible to the naked eye with a combined apparent visual magnitude of 5.88. It is catalogued as a member of the IC 2391 supercluster by Olin J. Eggen.
Constellation families are collections of constellations sharing some defining characteristic, such as proximity on the celestial sphere, common historical origin, or common mythological theme. In the Western tradition, most of the northern constellations stem from Ptolemy's list in the Almagest, and most of the far southern constellations were introduced by sailors and astronomers who traveled to the south in the 16th to 18th centuries. Separate traditions arose in India and China.
Gould designations for stars are similar to Flamsteed designations in the way that they number stars within a constellation in increasing order of right ascension. Each star is assigned an integer, followed by " G. ", and then the Latin genitive of the constellation it lies in. See 88 modern constellations for a list of constellations and the genitive forms of their names.
Sigma Piscium is a main-sequence star in the zodiac constellation of Pisces. It has an apparent magnitude of +5.50, meaning it is barely visible to the naked eye, according to the Bortle scale. While parallax measurements by the Hipparcos spacecraft give a distance of approximately 430 light years, dynamical parallax measurements put it slightly closer, at 368 light-years from Earth.
7 Piscium is a single star in the zodiac constellation of Pisces, located around 343 light-years away from the Sun. It has the Bayer designation b Piscium; 7 Piscium is the Flamsteed designation. This object is visible to the naked eye as a faint, orange-hued star with an apparent visual magnitude of 5.07. It is moving further from the Earth with a heliocentric radial velocity of 40 km/s.
Urania's Mirror; or, a view of the Heavens is a set of 32 astronomical star chart cards, first published in November 1824. They are illustrations based on Alexander Jamieson's A Celestial Atlas, but the addition of holes punched in them allow them to be held up to a light to see a depiction of the constellation's stars. They were engraved by Sidney Hall, and were said to be designed by "a lady", but have since been identified as the work of the Reverend Richard Rouse Bloxam, an assistant master at Rugby School.
The northern celestial hemisphere, also called the Northern Sky, is the northern half of the celestial sphere; that is, it lies north of the celestial equator. This arbitrary sphere appears to rotate westward around a polar axis due to Earth's rotation.