Microscopium is a minor constellation in the southern celestial hemisphere. It is one of twelve created in the 18th century by French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille. The name is a Latinised form of the Greek word for microscope. Its stars are faint and hardly visible from most of the non-tropical Northern Hemisphere.
About Microscopium in brief
Microscopium is a minor constellation in the southern celestial hemisphere. It is one of twelve created in the 18th century by French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille. The name is a Latinised form of the Greek word for microscope. Its stars are faint and hardly visible from most of the non-tropical Northern Hemisphere. The constellation’s brightest star is Gamma Microscopii of apparent magnitude 4. 68, a yellow giant 2. 5 times the Sun’s mass located 223 ± 8 light-years distant. Two star systems—WASP-7 and HD 205739 have been determined to have planets, while two others have debris disks. The whole constellation is visible to observers south of latitude 45°N. Many objects are too faint to be seen with the naked eye with the help of a telescope. The star AXscopi is a white A-class magnetic variable star with strong metallic lines similar to Cor Caroli.
It lies 166 light years away, and its companion, Epsilon Micro Scopii, lies 5 light- years away. The two stars make up a wide double whose components are splittable to the splittability of a single telescope. There are 43 stars brighter than or equal to apparent magnitude 6. 5 within the constellation’s borders, with the brightest being Alpha MicroScopii. The recommended three-letter abbreviation for the constellation, as adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 1922, is \”Mic\”. The official constellation boundaries, as set by Belgian astronomer Eugène Delporte in 1930, are defined by a polygon of four segments. In the equatorial coordinate system, the right ascension coordinates of these borders lie between 20h 27. 3m and 21h 28. 4m, while the declination coordinates are between −27. 45° and −45. 09°.
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This page is based on the article Microscopium published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 06, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
