Norma (constellation)

Norma is a small constellation in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere between Ara and Lupus. Its name is Latin for normal, referring to a right angle, and is variously considered to represent a rule, a carpenter’s square, a set square or a level. Four of Norma’s brighter stars—Gamma, Delta, Epsilon and Eta—make up a square in the field of faint stars. The Milky Way passes through Norma and the constellation contains eight open clusters.

About Norma (constellation) in brief

Norma is a small constellation in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere between Ara and Lupus. Its name is Latin for normal, referring to a right angle, and is variously considered to represent a rule, a carpenter’s square, a set square or a level. Four of Norma’s brighter stars—Gamma, Delta, Epsilon and Eta—make up a square in the field of faint stars. Gamma2 Normae is the brightest star with an apparent magnitude of 4.0. The Milky Way passes through Norma, and the constellation contains eight open clusters visible to observers with binoculars. Norma is bordered by Scorpius to the north, Lupus to the northwest, Circinus to the west, Triangulum Australe to the south and Ara to the east. Covering 165. 3 square degrees and 0. 401% of the night sky, it ranks 74th of the 88 constellations in size. The three-letter abbreviation for the constellation, as adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 1922, is “Nor”. The official constellation boundaries, as set by Belgian astronomer Eugène Delporte in 1930, are defined by a polygon of ten segments. In the equatorial coordinate system, the right ascension coordinates of these borders lie between 15h 12m 13.

6119s and 16h 36m 08. 3235s, while the declination coordinates are between −42. 27° and −60. 44°. The whole constellation is visible south of latitude 29°N, and there are 44 stars within the constellation’s borders brighter than or equal to apparent magnitude 6. 5. The constellation also hosts Abell 3627, also called the Norma Cluster, one of the most massive galaxy clusters known. It is located around 1500 light-years from Earth and is a yellow giant of spectral type III around 2 to 2.2 times the diameter of the Sun. There are also four star systems known to harbour planets. Gamma1 and Gamma2Normae are not a true binary star system, and are not an optical double star system. There is also a yellow-white supergiant, Gamma1 Normae, located around 1,000 light years from Earth, and a yellow yellow giant, Gamma 2 Normae. It has a luminosity between a quarter million and one million times the Sun’s luminosity and shines with 45 times the luminosity of the sun. The four main stars in Norma are known to be bright enough to be seen with the naked eye, and four of the stars in the cluster are visible to the nakedeye.

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