Columba (constellation)

Columba
Constellation
Abbreviation Col
Genitive Columbae
Pronunciation /kəˈlʌmbə/,
genitive /kəˈlʌmbiː/
Symbolism the dove
Right ascension 05h 03m 53.8665s–06h 39m 36.9263s[1]
Declination −27.0772038°–−43.1116486°[1]
Area 270 sq. deg. (54th)
Main stars 5
Bayer/Flamsteed
stars		 18
Stars with planets 1
Stars brighter than 3.00m 1
Stars within 10.00 pc (32.62 ly) 0
Brightest star α Col (Phact) (2.65m)
Messier objects 0
Meteor showers None
Bordering
constellations		 Lepus
Caelum
Pictor
Puppis
Canis Major
Visible at latitudes between +45° and −90°.
Best visible at 21:00 (9 p.m.) during the month of February.

Columba is a small, faint constellation created in the late sixteenth century. Its name is Latin for dove. It is located just south of Canis Major and Lepus.

History

The constellation Columba as it can be seen by the naked eye.
  • Early 3rd century BC: Aratus's astronomical poem Phainomena (lines 367-370 and 384-385) mentions faint stars where Columba is now, but does not fit any name or figure to them.
  • 2nd century AD: Ptolemy listed 48 constellations in the Almagest but did not mention Columba.
  • c. 150-215 AD: Clement of Alexandria wrote in his Logos Paidogogos[2]"Αἱ δὲ σφραγῖδες ἡμῖν ἔστων πελειὰς ἢ ἰχθὺς ἢ ναῦς οὐριοδρομοῦσα ἢ λύρα μουσική, ᾗ κέχρηται Πολυκράτης, ἢ ἄγκυρα ναυτική," (= "[when recommending symbols for Christians to use], let our seals be a dove or a fish or a ship running in a good wind or a musical lyre ... or a ship's anchor ..."), with no mention of stars or astronomy.
  • 1592 AD: [3] Petrus Plancius first depicted Columba on the small celestial planispheres of his large wall map, named "Columba Nohae" (Noah's Dove"), to differentiate the 'unformed stars' of the large constellation Canis Major.[4]. Columba is also shown on his smaller world map of 1594 and on early Dutch celestial globes. Plancius originally named the constellation Columba Noachi ("Noah's Dove"), referring to the dove that gave Noah the information that the Great Flood was receding. This name is found on early 17th-century celestial globes and star atlases.
The constellation seen as "Columba Noachi" in Urania's Mirror (1825).
  • 1592: Frederick de Houtman listed Columba as "De Duyve med den Olijftack" (= "the dove with the olive branch")
  • 1603: Bayer's Uranometria was published. It includes Columba as Columba Noachi.[5]
  • 1624: Bartschius listed Columba in his Usus Astronomicus as "Columba Nohae".
  • 1662: Caesius published Coelum Astronomico-Poeticum, including an inaccurate Latin translation of the above text of Clement of Alexandria: it mistranslated "ναῦς οὐριοδρομοῦσα" as Latin "Navis coelestis cursu in coelum tendens" ("Ship of the sky following a course in the sky"), perhaps misunderstanding "οὐριο-" as "up in the air or sky" by analogy with οὐρανός = "sky".
  • 1679: Halley mentioned Columba in his work Catalogus Stellarum Australium from his observations on St. Helena.
  • 1679: Augustin Royer published a star atlas that showed Columba as a constellation.
  • c.1690: Hevelius's Prodromus Astronomiae showed Columba but did not list it as a constellation.
  • 1712 (pirated) and 1725 (authorized): Flamsteed's work Historia Coelestis Britannica showed Columba but did not list it as a constellation.
  • 1757 or 1763: Lacaille listed Columba as a constellation and catalogued its stars.
  • 1889: Richard H. Allen[6], misled by Caesius's mistranslation, wrote that the Columba asterism may have been invented in Roman/Greek times, but with a footnote saying that it may have been another star group.
  • 2001: Ridpath and Tirion wrote that Columba may also represent the dove released by Jason and the Argonauts at the Black Sea's mouth; it helped them navigate the dangerous Symplegades.[3]
  • 2007: The author P.K. Chen wrote (his opinion) that, given the mythological linkage of a dove with Jason and the Argonauts, and the celestial location of Columba over Puppis (part of the old constellation Argo Navis, the ship of the Argonauts), Columba may have an ancient history although Ptolemy omits it.[7][8]

In the Society Islands, Alpha Columbae (Phact) was called Ana-iva.[10]

Features

Stars

Columba is rather inconspicuous, the brightest star, Alpha Columbae, being only of magnitude 2.7. Alpha Columbae, a blue-white star, is traditionally called Phact, which means "ring dove". Alpha Columbae is 268 light-years from Earth. The only other named star in Columba is Beta Columbae, which has the name Wazn. It is an orange-hued giant star of magnitude 3.1, 87 light-years from Earth.[11]

Columba is the constellation at the solar antapex - the Earth (and Sun) is moving away from its direction as the solar system moves through space.

The constellation contains the runaway star μ Columbae, which was probably expelled from the ι Orionis system.

Exoplanet NGTS-1b and its star NGTS-1 are in Columba.

Deep-sky objects

There is one globular cluster in Columba, 7th-magnitude NGC 1851. It is 39,000 light-years from Earth and is resolvable in medium-sized amateur telescopes.[11]
NGC 1792 is a spiral galaxy of magnitude 10.2. NGC 1808 is a Seyfert galaxy of magnitude 10.8.

See also

Columba (Chinese astronomy)

Citations

  1. 1 2 "Columba, constellation boundary". The Constellations. International Astronomical Union. Archived from the original on 5 June 2013. Retrieved 27 February 2014.
  2. ↑ Schildgen, B. (23 January 2016). "Heritage or Heresy: Preservation and Destruction of Religious Art and Architecture in Europe". Springer. Archived from the original on 31 December 2017. Retrieved 25 April 2018 – via Google Books.
  3. 1 2 Ridpath & Tirion 2001, pp. 120-121.
  4. ↑ Ley, Willy (December 1963). "The Names of the Constellations". For Your Information. Galaxy Science Fiction. pp. 90–99.
  5. ↑ Canis Maior and Columba in Bayers Uranometria 1603 (Linda Hall Library) Archived 2007-04-27 at the Wayback Machine.
  6. ↑ Richard H. Allen (1899) Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning, pp. 166-168
  7. ↑ P.K. Chen (2007) A Constellation Album: Stars and Mythology of the Night Sky, p. 126 ( ISBN 978-1-931559-38-6).
  8. ↑ Chen, p. 126.
  9. ↑ Lost Stars, by Morton Wagman, publ. Mcdonald & Woodward Publishing Company, First printing September 2003, ISBN 0-939923-78-5 , page 110
  10. ↑ Makemson 1941, p. 281.
  11. 1 2 Ridpath & Tirion 2017, p. 122.

References

  • Makemson, Maud Worcester (1941). The Morning Star Rises: an account of Polynesian astronomy. Yale University Press. p. 281.
  • Ridpath, Ian; Tirion, Wil (2001), Stars and Planets Guide, Princeton University Press, ISBN 0-691-08913-2
  • Ridpath, Ian, and Tirion, Wil (2017). Stars and Planets Guide, Collins, London. ISBN 978-0-00-823927-5. Princeton University Press, Princeton. ISBN 978-0-69-117788-5.

Coordinates: 06h 00m 00s, −35° 00′ 00″

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