TAURUS

Greek name:
Genitive:Tauri
Abbreviation:Tau
Size ranking:17th
Origin:One of the 48 Greek constellations listed by Ptolemy in the Almagest

Taurus ( in Greek)
is a distinctive constellation, with star-tipped horns and a head defined by a V-shaped group of stars.
Two Greek bull-myths were associated with Taurus. Usually it was said to represent Zeus in the
disguise he adopted for another of his extramarital affairs, this time as the bull that carried away
Europa, daughter of King Agenor of Phoenicia.
Europa liked to play on the beach with the other girls of Tyre. Zeus instructed his son Hermes to drive
the kings cattle from their pastures on the mountain slopes towards the shore where the girls were
playing. Adopting the shape of a bull, Zeus surreptitiously mingled with the lowing herd, awaiting his
chance to abduct Europa. There was no mistaking who was the most handsome bull. His hide was
white as fresh snow and his horns shone like polished metal.
Europa was entranced by this beautiful yet placid creature. She adorned his horns with flowers and
stroked his flanks, admiring the muscles on his neck and the folds of skin on his flanks. The bull kissed
her hands, while inwardly Zeus could hardly contain himself in anticipation of the final conquest. The
bull lay on the golden sands and Europa ventured to sit on his back. At first, she feared nothing when
the bull rose and began to paddle in the surf. But she became alarmed when it began to swim strongly
out to sea. Europa looked around in dismay at the receding shoreline and clung tightly to the bulls
horns as waves washed over the bulls back. Craftily, Zeus the bull dipped more deeply into the water
to make her hold him more tightly still.
By now, Europa had realized that this was no ordinary bull. Eventually, the bull waded ashore at Crete,
where Zeus revealed his true identity and seduced Europa. He gave her presents that included a dog
that later became the constellation Canis Major. The offspring of Zeus and Europa included Minos, king
of Crete, who established the famous palace at Knossos where bull games were held.
An alternative story says that Taurus may represent Io, another illicit love of Zeus, whom the god
turned into a heifer to disguise her from his wife Hera. But Hera was suspicious and set the hundredeyed watchman Argus to guard the heifer. Hera, furious at this, sent a gadfly to chase the heifer, who
threw herself into the sea and swam away.

Genitive:Tucanae
Abbreviation:Tuc
Size ranking:48th
Origin:The 12 southern constellations of Keyser and de Houtman

TUCANA

One of the 12 southern constellations devised by the Dutch navigators Pieter

Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman at the end of the 16th century. It
represents the South American bird with a huge bill.
The Dutchman Petrus Plancius gave it the name Toucan when he first depicted
it on a globe in 1598, and Johann Bayer followed suit on his atlas of 1603. But
de Houtman, in his catalogue of 1603, called it Den Indiaenschen Exster, op
Indies Lang ghenaemt (the Indian magpie, named Lang in the Indies, the
word lang referring to the birds long beak). De Houtman was apparently
describing not a toucan but the hornbill, a similarly endowed bird that is native
to the East Indies and Malaysia. This suggests that the original inventor was in
fact Keyser, who had visited South America before his voyage to the East
Indies and could have seen the bird there. In some depictions which used de
Houtmans catalogue as a source, such as Willem Janszoon Blaeus globe of
1603, the bird was shown as a hornbill rather than a toucan, complete with
casque above its bill, but the original identification as a toucan won out.
Tucanas brightest star, Alpha Tucanae, marking the tip of the birds beak, is of
only third magnitude, but the constellation is distinguished by two features of
particular interest: firstly, the globular star cluster 47 Tucanae, rated the
second-best such object in the entire sky, so bright that it was labelled in the
same way as a star; and the Small Magellanic Cloud, the smaller and fainter of
the two companion galaxies of our Milky Way. These features were originally
part of Hydrus but were transferred to Tucana when the French astronomer
Nicolas Louis de Lacaille reorganized this part of the southerm heavens in the
1750s.
Incidentally, 47 Tucanae is not a Flamsteed number; it comes from its listing in
Johann Bodes catalogue called Allgemeine Beschreibung und Nachweisung der
Gestirne, published in 1801 to accompany his Uranographia star atlas. It was
first recorded as a star by Keyser and de Houtman. Bayer showed it on
hissouthern star chart of 1603 within one of the coils of Hydrus, beneath the
claw of the toucan, but its nebulous nature was first noted by Lacaille a
century and a half later.

URSA MAJOR (THE GREAT BEAR)

Genitive:Ursae Majoris
Abbreviation:UMa
Size ranking:3rd
Origin:One of the 48 Greek constellations listed by Ptolemy in the Almagest
Greek name: (Arktos Megale)
Undoubtedly the most familiar star pattern in the entire sky is the seven stars that make up the shape
popularly termed the Plough or Big Dipper, part of the constellation Ursa Major, the Great Bear. The
seven stars form the rump and tail of the bear, while the rest of the animal is comprised of fainter
stars. Ursa Major is the third-largest constellation.
Aratus said the constellation was called Helike ( in Greek), meaning twister, apparently from its
circling of the pole, and said that the ancient Greeks steered their ships by reference to it. In
the Odyssey, for example, we read that Odysseus kept the great bear to his left as he sailed
eastwards. The Phoenicians, on the other hand, used the Little Bear (Ursa Minor), which Aratus
termed Cynosura (). Aratus tells us that the bears were also called wagons or wains, and in
one place he referred to the figure of Ursa Major as the wagon-bear to underline its dual identity.

Homer in the Odyssey referred to the Great Bear that men call the Wain, that circles opposite Orion,
and never bathes in the sea, the last phrase being a reference to its circumpolar (non-setting) nature.
The adjacent constellation Botes was imagined as either the herdsman of the bear or the wagon
driver. Germanicus Caesar seems to have been the first to mention a third, now-common identity he
said that the bears were also called ploughs because, as he wrote, the shape of a plough is the
closest to the real shape formed by their stars.

URSA MINOR (THE LITTER BEAR)

Genitive:Ursae Minoris
Abbreviation:UMi
Size ranking:56th
Origin:One of the 48 Greek constellations listed by Ptolemy in the Almagest
Greek name: (Arktos Mikra)

The Little Bear was said by the Greeks to have been first named by the astronomer Thales of Miletus,
who lived from about 625 to 545 BC. The earliest reference to it seems to have been made by the
poet Callimachus of the third century BC, who reported that Thales measured out the little stars of

the Wain [wagon] by which the Phoenicians sail. The little bear was evidently unknown to Homer, two
centuries before Thales, for he wrote only of the Great Bear, never mentioning its smaller counterpart.
It is not clear whether Thales actually invented the constellation or merely introduced it to the Greeks,
for Thales was reputedly descended from a Phoenician family and, as Callimachus said, the
Phoenicians navigated by reference to Ursa Minor rather than Ursa Major. Aratus points out that
although the Little Bear is smaller and fainter than the Great Bear, it lies closer to the pole and hence
provides a better guide to true north. We have the word of Eratosthenes that the Greeks also knew
Ursa Minor as Phoenike (), i.e. the Phoenician. In the sky the two bears stand back to back,
facing in opposite directions, with the tail of Draco the dragon between them.

VELA (THE SAILS)

Genitive:Velae
Abbreviation:Vel

Size ranking:32nd
Origin:Part of the original Greek constellation Argo Navis
One of the three sections into which the French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille divided the
oversized Greek constellation of Argo Navis, the Argonauts ship, in his southern star catalogue of
1756. In that catalogue he gave it the French name Voilure du Navire. (His final catalogue, Coelum
australe stelliferum, appeared in 1763 containing the same three subdivisions but with Latin names.)
Vela represents the ships sails; the other sections are Carina, the Keel, and Puppis, the Stern. Lacaille
wrote: I have called the sails [i.e. Vela] everything outside the vessel between the edges and the
horizontal mast, or the spar on which the sail is reefed.

Genitive:Telescopii
Abbreviation:Tel
Size ranking:57th
Origin:The 14 southern constellations of Nicolas Louis de Lacaille

One of the faint and obscure constellations of the southern sky introduced by
the Frenchman Nicolas Louis de Lacaille after his sky-mapping trip to the Cape
of Good Hope in 175152. It represents the type of long, unwieldy refractor
suspended from a pole known as an aerial telescope, as used by J. D. Cassini
at Paris Observatory. The reason for the great length was to reduce chromatic
aberration (false colour) produced by the crude lenses of that time.
Lacaille originally depicted Telescopium as extending northwards between
Sagittarius and Scorpius, as shown on the accompanying illustration by Johann
Bode, but modern astronomers have cut off the top of the telescopes tube and
mounting so that it is now restricted to a rectangular area of sky south of
Sagittarius and Corona Australis.
As a result, Lacailles Beta Telescopii, positioned in the pulley at the top of the
mast, is now Eta Sagittarii, Gamma Telescopii, in the upper part of the
refractors tube, is G Scorpii, and Lacailles Theta Telescopii, which marked the
telescopes objective lens, is humble 45 Ophiuchi (also known as d Ophiuchi).
See here for a modern chart of this area. Its brightest star, Alpha Telescopii, is
magnitude 3.5.

TRIANGULUM (THE TRIANGLE)

Genitive:Trianguli
Abbreviation:Tri
Size ranking:78th
Origin:One of the 48 Greek constellations listed by Ptolemy in the Almagest
Greek name: (Trigonon)

Since any three points make up the corners of a triangle it is unsurprising, if

TELESCOPIUM
(THE TELESCOPE)

TRIANGULUM AUSTRALE (THE SOUTHERN TRIANGLE)

Genitive:Trianguli Australis
Abbreviation:TrA
Size ranking:83rd
Origin:The 12 southern constellations of Keyser and de Houtman

One of the 12 constellations introduced at the end of the 16th century by the Dutch navigators Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser
and Frederick de Houtman, and the smallest of them according to modern boundaries. A southern triangle had
previously been shown in a completely different position, south of Argo Navis, on a globe of 1589 by the Dutchman
Petrus Plancius, along with a southern cross, but they were not the constellations we know today. The modern
Triangulum Australe was first depicted in 1598 on a globe by Petrus Plancius and first appeared in print in 1603 on
the Uranometria atlas of Johann Bayer.
The three main stars of Triangulum Australe are brighter than those of their northern counterpart, although the
constellation is smaller. Navigators have named its brightest star Atria, a contraction of its scientific name Alpha
Trianguli Australis.