Horologium (constellation)

Horologium
Constellation

Abbreviation Hor
Genitive Horologii
Pronunciation /ˌhɒrəˈloʊdʒiəm, -ˈlɒ-/,[1]
genitive /ˌhɒrəˈloʊdʒiˌaɪ, -ˈlɒ-/
Symbolism the Pendulum Clock
Right ascension 3
Declination −60
Family La Caille
Quadrant SQ1
Area 249 sq. deg. (58th)
Main stars 6
Bayer/Flamsteed
stars		 10
Stars with planets 2
Stars brighter than 3.00m 0
Stars within 10.00 pc (32.62 ly) 1
Brightest star α Hor (3.85m)
Nearest star GJ 1061
(11.99 ly, 3.66 pc)
Messier objects none
Meteor showers ?????
?????
Bordering
constellations		 Eridanus
Hydrus
Reticulum
Dorado
Caelum
Visible at latitudes between +30° and −90°.
Best visible at 21:00 (9 p.m.) during the month of December.

Horologium is a faint constellation in the southern sky. It was devised by French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in 1752, and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations. The constellation's brightest star is Alpha Horologii, an orange giant. R Horologii is a red giant Mira variable with one of the widest ranges in brightness known. Two star systems have exoplanets, while Nu Horologii has a debris disk.

History

The French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille first described the constellation in French as l'Horloge à pendule & à secondes (clock with pendulum and seconds hand) in 1752,[2][3] after he had observed and catalogued almost 10,000 southern stars during a two-year stay at the Cape of Good Hope. He devised fourteen new constellations in uncharted regions of the Southern Celestial Hemisphere not visible from Europe. All but one honoured instruments that symbolised the Age of Enlightenment.[lower-alpha 1] Lacaille Latinised the name to Horologium on his 1763 chart.[4]

Characteristics

Covering a total of 248.9 square degrees or 0.603% of the sky, Horologium ranks 58th in area out of the 88 modern constellations.[5] Its position in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere means that the whole constellation is visible to observers south of 23°N.[5][lower-alpha 2] Horologium is bordered by five different constellations: Eridanus (the Po River), Caelum (the chisel), Reticulum (the reticle), Dorado (the dolphinfish/swordfish), and Hydrus (the male water snake). The three-letter abbreviation for the constellation, as adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 1922, is 'Hor'.[6] The official constellation boundaries are defined by a twenty-two sided polygon (illustrated in infobox). In the equatorial coordinate system, the right ascension coordinates of these borders lie between 02h 12.5m and 04h 20.2m, while the declination coordinates are between −39.63° and −67.04°.[7]

Notable features

The constellation Horologium as it can be seen by the naked eye.

Stars

Horologium has only one star brighter than apparent magnitude 4,[8] and 41 stars brighter than or equal to magnitude 6.5.[lower-alpha 3][5] Lacaille charted and designated 11 stars with the Bayer designations Alpha through to Lambda Horologii in 1756. Baily removed the designations of Epsilon and Theta Horologii as he held they were too faint to warrant naming. He was unable to find a star that corresponded to the coordinates Lacaille's Beta Horologii. Determining that the coordinates were wrong, he assigned the designation to another star. Kappa Horologii, too, was unable to be verified, yet was most likely the star HD 18292. Gould assigned designations to what became Mu and Nu Horologii as he felt they were bright enough to warrant them.[4]

Alpha Horologii, the brightest, is an orange giant of magnitude 3.9, located 115.0 ± 0.5 light-years distant from Earth.[10] Beta Horologii is a white giant of magnitude 5.0, 314 light-years from Earth.

Lambda Horologii is an ageing yellow-white giant star of spectral type F2III that spins around at 140 km/second, and is hence mildly oblate.[11] It is 161 ± 1 light-years from Earth.[10]

However, Horologium does have several variable stars. R Horologii is a red giant Mira variable with one of the widest ranges in brightness known,[12] around 700 light-years from Earth. It has a minimum magnitude of 14.3 and a maximum magnitude of 4.7; its period is approximately 13 months.[13] TW Horologii is a semiregular variable red giant star that is classified as a carbon star. It is around 1000 light-years distant from Earth.

Deep-sky objects

Horologium is also home to many deep-sky objects; there are several globular clusters in the constellation. NGC 1261 is a globular cluster of 8th magnitude, located 44,000 light-years from Earth.[13] NGC 1512 is a barred spiral galaxy located about 38 million light-years away from Earth. The globular cluster Arp-Madore 1 is found in the constellation, the most remotely known globular cluster in the Milky Way at a distance of 398,000 light years.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ The exception is Mensa, named for the Table Mountain. The other thirteen (alongside Horologium) are Antlia, Caelum, Circinus, Fornax, Microscopium, Norma, Octans, Pictor, Pyxis, Reticulum, Sculptor and Telescopium.[4]
  2. ↑ While parts of the constellation technically rise above the horizon to observers between the latitudes of 23°N and 50°N, stars within a few degrees of the horizon are to all intents and purposes unobservable.[5]
  3. ↑ Objects of magnitude 6.5 are among the faintest visible to the unaided eye in suburban-rural transition night skies.[9]

References

  1. ↑ "Horologium". Oxford Dictionaries. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 2016-01-21.
  2. ↑ Ridpath, Ian. "Lacaille's Southern Planisphere of 1756". Star Tales. Self-published. Retrieved 19 March 2016.
  3. ↑ Lacaille, Nicolas Louis (1756). "Relation abrégée du Voyage fait par ordre du Roi au cap de Bonne-espérance". Mémoires de l'Académie Royale des Sciences (in French): 519–592 [588].
  4. 1 2 3 Wagman, Morton (2003). Lost Stars: Lost, Missing and Troublesome Stars from the Catalogues of Johannes Bayer, Nicholas Louis de Lacaille, John Flamsteed, and Sundry Others. Blacksburg, Virginia: The McDonald & Woodward Publishing Company. pp. 6–7, 169–70. ISBN 978-0-939923-78-6.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Ridpath, Ian. "Constellations: Andromeda–Indus". Star Tales. self-published. Retrieved 19 March 2016.
  6. ↑ Russell, Henry Norris (1922). "The New International Symbols for the Constellations". Popular Astronomy. 30: 469. Bibcode:1922PA.....30..469R.
  7. ↑ "Horologium, Constellation Boundary". The Constellations. International Astronomical Union. Retrieved 19 March 2016.
  8. ↑ Moore, Patrick; Tirion, Wil (1997). Cambridge Guide to Stars and Planets. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. p. 190. ISBN 978-0-521-58582-8.
  9. ↑ Bortle, John E. (February 2001). "The Bortle Dark-Sky Scale". Sky & Telescope. Sky Publishing Corporation. Retrieved 1 August 2015.
  10. 1 2 van Leeuwen, F. (2007). "Validation of the New Hipparcos Reduction". Astronomy and Astrophysics. 474 (2): 653–64. arXiv:0708.1752Freely accessible. Bibcode:2007A&A...474..653V. doi:10.1051/0004-6361:20078357.
  11. ↑ Belle, G. T. (2012). "Interferometric observations of rapidly rotating stars". The Astronomy and Astrophysics Review. 20: 51. arXiv:1204.2572Freely accessible. Bibcode:2012A&ARv..20...51V. doi:10.1007/s00159-012-0051-2.
  12. ↑ Privett, Grant; Jones, Kevin (2013). The Constellation Observing Atlas. New York, New York: Springer Science & Business Media. p. 102. ISBN 9781461476481.
  13. 1 2 Ridpath & Tirion 2001, pp. 156-157.
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Coordinates: 03h 00m 00s, −60° 00′ 00″

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