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Hydrus (constellation)
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 (or early 1598) 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. The brightest star is the 2.8-magnitude Beta Hydri, also the closest reasonably bright star to the south celestial pole. Pulsating between magnitude 3.26 and 3.33, Gamma Hydri is a variable red giant 60 times the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hydrus (other)
Hydrus is a small constellation in the southern sky. Hydrus may also refer to: * Hydrus (Chinese astronomy), constellations recognized in China * Hydrus (legendary creature), a creature from Medieval bestiaries * Hydrus (roller coaster), a Gerstlauer Euro-Fighter roller coaster at Casino Pier * Hydrus (software), a software suite for simulating subsurface water flow * SS Hydrus, SS ''Hydrus'', a Great Lakes freighter See also * Hydros (other) {{disambiguation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser
Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser (occasionally Petrus Theodorus; – 11 September 1596) was a Dutch navigator and celestial cartographer who mapped several constellations on the southern celestial hemisphere. Voyages and star observation Little is known of Keyser's life outside of his astronomical observations and East Indies voyages. After making several voyages under the Portuguese flag, including one to Brazil, Keyser participated as the chief navigator and head of the steersmen for the first Dutch voyage to the East Indies (the " Eerste Schipvaart"), which left Texel with four ships on 2 April 1595 under Cornelis de Houtman. He had been trained by cartographer Petrus Plancius in mathematics and astronomy. Plancius, a key promoter to the Dutch East Indies expeditions, had instructed Keyser to map the skies in the southern hemisphere, which were largely uncharted at the time. When the fleet finally was able to obtain fresh supplies at Madagascar on 13 September, 71 of the 248 sa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
VW Hydri
VW Hydri is a dwarf nova of the SU Ursae Majoris type in the deep southern constellation Hydrus; a star system that consists of a white dwarf and another generally cool star. It is one of the brightest dwarf novae systems in the sky. These systems are characterised by frequent eruptions and less frequent supereruptions. The former are smooth, while the latter exhibit short "superhumps" of heightened activity. The white dwarf sucks matter from the other star onto an accretion disc and periodically erupts, reaching apparent magnitude Apparent magnitude () is a measure of the brightness of a star or other astronomical object observed from Earth. An object's apparent magnitude depends on its intrinsic luminosity, its distance from Earth, and any extinction of the object's ... 8.4 in superoutbursts, 9.0 in normal outbursts and remaining at magnitude 14.4 when quiet. Normal outbursts occur every 27.3 days and last for 1.4 days, while superoutbursts happen 179 days and last for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Red Giant
A red giant is a luminous giant star of low or intermediate mass (roughly 0.3–8 solar masses ()) in a late phase of stellar evolution. The outer atmosphere is inflated and tenuous, making the radius large and the surface temperature around or lower. The appearance of the red giant is from yellow-white to reddish-orange, including the spectral types K and M, sometimes G, but also class S stars and most carbon stars. Red giants vary in the way by which they generate energy: * most common red giants are stars on the red-giant branch (RGB) that are still fusing hydrogen into helium in a shell surrounding an inert helium core * red-clump stars in the cool half of the horizontal branch, fusing helium into carbon in their cores via the triple-alpha process * asymptotic-giant-branch (AGB) stars with a helium burning shell outside a degenerate carbon–oxygen core, and a hydrogen-burning shell just beyond that. Many of the well-known bright stars are red giants because they are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gamma Hydri
γ Hydri, Latinised as Gamma Hydri, is a solitary, red-hued star in the constellation Hydrus. It has an apparent visual magnitude of 3.26, making it easily visible to the naked eye at night. Based upon an annual parallax shift of 15.24 mas as measured from Earth, the system is located about 214 light-years from the Sun. This is an evolved red giant star with a stellar classification of M1 III, and is most likely on the asymptotic giant branch of the HR diagram. It is a semiregular variable that pulsates between magnitudes 3.26 and 3.33, although its period is not known precisely. It has about the same mass as the Sun, but has expanded to around 62 times the Sun's radius. The star is radiating 513 times the Sun's luminosity The solar luminosity (), is a unit of radiant flux (power emitted in the form of photons) conventionally used by astronomers to measure the luminosity of stars, galaxies and other celestial objects in terms of the output of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pole Star
A pole star or polar star is a star, preferably bright, nearly aligned with the axis of a rotating astronomical body. Currently, Earth's pole stars are Polaris (Alpha Ursae Minoris), a bright magnitude-2 star aligned approximately with its northern axis that serves as a pre-eminent star in celestial navigation, and a much dimmer magnitude-5.5 star on its southern axis, Polaris Australis (Sigma Octantis). From around 1700 BC until just after 300 AD, Kochab (Beta Ursae Minoris) and Pherkad (Gamma Ursae Minoris) were twin northern pole stars, though neither was as close to the pole as Polaris is now. History In classical antiquity, Beta Ursae Minoris (Kochab) was closer to the celestial north pole than Alpha Ursae Minoris. While there was no naked-eye star close to the pole, the midpoint between Alpha and Beta Ursae Minoris was reasonably close to the pole, and it appears that the entire constellation of Ursa Minor, in antiquity known as '':wikt:Cynosura, Cynosura'' (Greek ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apparent Magnitude
Apparent magnitude () is a measure of the brightness of a star or other astronomical object observed from Earth. An object's apparent magnitude depends on its intrinsic luminosity, its distance from Earth, and any extinction of the object's light caused by interstellar dust along the line of sight to the observer. The word ''magnitude'' in astronomy, unless stated otherwise, usually refers to a celestial object's apparent magnitude. The magnitude scale dates back to the ancient Roman astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, whose star catalog listed stars from 1st magnitude (brightest) to 6th magnitude (dimmest). The modern scale was mathematically defined in a way to closely match this historical system. The scale is reverse logarithmic: the brighter an object is, the lower its magnitude number. A difference of 1.0 in magnitude corresponds to a brightness ratio of \sqrt /math>, or about 2.512. For example, a star of magnitude 2.0 is 2.512 times as bright as a star of magnitude 3.0, 6. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Northern Hemisphere
The Northern Hemisphere is the half of Earth that is north of the Equator. For other planets in the Solar System, north is defined as being in the same celestial hemisphere relative to the invariable plane of the solar system as Earth's North Pole. Owing to Earth's axial tilt of 23.439281°, winter in the Northern Hemisphere lasts from the December solstice (typically December 21 UTC) to the March equinox (typically March 20 UTC), while summer lasts from the June solstice through to the September equinox (typically on 23 September UTC). The dates vary each year due to the difference between the calendar year and the astronomical year. Within the Northern Hemisphere, oceanic currents can change the weather patterns that affect many factors within the north coast. Such events include El Niño–Southern Oscillation. Trade winds blow from east to west just above the equator. The winds pull surface water with them, creating currents, which flow westward due to the Coriolis e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bayer Designation
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 (including Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille and Benjamin Apthorp Gould) supplemented Bayer's catalog with entries for southern constellations. Scheme Bayer assigned a lowercase Greek letter (alpha (α), beta (β), gamma (γ), etc.) or a Latin letter (A, b, c, etc.) to each star he catalogued, combined with the Latin name of the star's parent constellation in genitive (possessive) form. The constellation name is frequently abbreviated to a standard three-letter form. For example, Aldebaran in the constellation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Star
A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by its gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night sky, night, but their immense distances from Earth make them appear as fixed stars, fixed points of light. The most prominent stars have been categorised into constellations and asterism (astronomy), asterisms, and many of the brightest stars have proper names. Astronomers have assembled star catalogues that identify the known stars and provide standardized stellar designations. The observable universe contains an estimated to stars. Only about 4,000 of these stars are visible to the naked eye, all within the Milky Way galaxy. A star's life star formation, begins with the gravitational collapse of a gaseous nebula of material composed primarily of hydrogen, along with helium and trace amounts of heavier elements. Its stellar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nicolas-Louis De Lacaille
Abbé Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille (; 15 March 171321 March 1762), formerly sometimes spelled de la Caille, was a kingdom of France, French astronomer and geodesist who named 14 out of the IAU designated constellations, 88 constellations. From 1750 to 1754, he studied the sky at the Cape Colony, Cape of Good Hope in present-day South Africa. Lacaille observed over 10,000 stars using just a small telescope, half-inch refracting telescope. Biography Born at Rumigny, Ardennes, Rumigny in the Ardennes in eastern France, he attended school in Mantes-sur-Seine (now Mantes-la-Jolie). Afterwards, he studied rhetoric and philosophy at the :fr:Collège de Lisieux, Collège de Lisieux and then theology at the Collège de Navarre. He was left destitute in 1731 by the death of his father, who had held a post in the household of the duchess of Vendôme. However, he was supported in his studies by the Louis Henri, Duke of Bourbon, Duc de Bourbon, his father's former patron. After he graduated, h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Uranometria
''Uranometria'' is a star atlas produced by Johann Bayer. It was published in Augsburg in 1603 by Christoph Mangle (''Christophorus Mangus'') under the full title ''Uranometria: omnium asterismorum continens schemata, nova methodo delineata, aereis laminis expressa''. This translates to "Uranometria, containing charts of all the constellations, drawn by a new method and engraved on copper plates". The word "Uranometria" derives from Urania, muse of the heavens and "uranos" (''oυρανός'') the Greek word for sky / heavens. A literal translation of "Uranometria" is "Measuring the Heavens" (to be compared with "Geometry"—''"Geometria"'' in Greek, literally translated to "Measuring the Earth"). It was the first atlas to cover the entire celestial sphere. Charts ''Uranometria'' contained 51 star charts, engraved on copper plates by Alexander Mair ( 1562–1617). The first 48 charts illustrate each of the 48 Ptolemaic constellations. The 49th chart introduces 12 new constell ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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