Apus

Apus was first depicted on a celestial globe by Petrus Plancius in 1598. It was charted on a star atlas by Johann Bayer in his 1603 Uranometria. The five brightest stars are all reddish in hue. Two star systems have been found to have planets.

About Apus in brief

Summary Apus Apus was first depicted on a celestial globe by Petrus Plancius in 1598. It was charted on a star atlas by Johann Bayer in his 1603 Uranometria. French explorer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille charted and gave the brighter stars their Bayer designations in 1756. The five brightest stars are all reddish in hue. Alpha Apodis is an orange giant that has around 48 times the diameter and 928 times the luminosity of the Sun. Two star systems have been found to have planets. Covering 206. 3 square degrees and hence 0. 5002% of the sky, Apus ranks 67th of the 88 modern constellations by area. It is bordered by Ara, Triangulum Australe and Circinus to the north, Musca and Chamaeleon to the west, Octans to the south, and Pavo to the east. The official constellation boundaries, as set by Belgian astronomer Eugène Delporte in 1930, are defined by a polygon of six segments.

In the equatorial coordinate system, the right ascension coordinates of these borders lie between 13h 49. 5m and 18h 27. 3m, while the declination coordinates are between −67. 48° and −83. 12°.Coordinates: 16h 00m 00s, −75° 00′ 00″ Apus is a small constellation in the southern sky. It represents a bird-of-paradise, and its name means ‘without feet’ in Greek because the bird was once wrongly believed to lack feet. Within the constellation’s borders, there are 39 stars brighter than or equal to apparent magnitude 5. Alpha, Delta, Gamma, Gamma and Beta form a narrow triangle, with Alpha Apis lying the east and Beta lying the west. The three-letter abbreviation for the constellation, as adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 1922, is ‘Aps’