Microscopium
Published on Aug 30, 2006 at 4:54 pm.
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Filed under constellations.
One of my former students seems to have a thing for the constellation Microscopium. It is a rather obscure constellation due south of Carpicornus, and west of Piscis Austrinus. As the name suggests, it is supposed to represent a microscope, but if anyone can find a microscope in my sketch of the constellation above, then I’d be surprised!
Many constellations can be traced back to ancient times. Microscopium is a fairly recent one, though. The constellation is generally credited to Abbe de Lacaille, who named this patch of stars Microscopium during his stay at the Cape of Good Hope from 1751 to 1752. Though pretty far south, Microscopium is plenty north enough to be seen from Rome, but the stars in that part of the sky are very dim, and the Romans never came up with a constellation there. Few of the stars are much brighter than 5th magnitude, so they are only a bit brighter than the naked eye limit, and the constellation is hopeless to try to see from light polluted skies.
In fact, this is a pretty sparse part of the sky, overall. There aren’t any bright galaxies, planetary nebulae, star clusters, or emission nebulae in that area. There are just a few very dim galaxies, and a few dim variable stars.Â
Even the stars, themselves, have identity problems. de Lacalle’s creation of the constellation was nearly 75 years after John Flamsteed’s number designations of stars in constellations. So, some of the stars that were eventually incorporated into Micrscopium had previously been part of Piscis Austrinus, as seen by Flamsteed. To that end, Epsilon Microscopii is also 4 Piscis Austrini. In fact, four of Microscopium’s stars have Piscis Austrinus Flamsteed numbers.Â
So, about all Microscopium has going for it is its cool name.
-Astroprof
