Lynx (constellation)
The constellation was introduced in the late 17th century by Johannes Hevelius. It is a faint constellation, with its brightest stars forming a zigzag line. The orange giant Alpha Lyncis is the brightest star in the constellation. Six star systems have been found to contain planets.
About Lynx (constellation) in brief
The constellation was introduced in the late 17th century by Johannes Hevelius. It is a faint constellation, with its brightest stars forming a zigzag line. The orange giant Alpha Lyncis is the brightest star in the constellation. Six star systems have been found to contain planets. Within the constellation’s borders lie NGC 2419, an unusually remote globular cluster; the galaxy NGC 2770, which has hosted three recent Type Ib supernovae; the distant quasar APM 08279+5255, whose light is magnified and split into multiple images by the gravitational lensing effect of a foreground galaxy; and the Lynx Supercluster, which was the most distant supercluster known at the time of its discovery in 1999. Lynx is bordered by Camelopardalis to the north, Auriga to the west, Gemini to the southwest, Cancer to the south, Leo to the east and Ursa Major to the northeast. On dark nights, the brighter stars can be seen as a crooked line extending roughly between Camel Leopardalis and Leo, and north of the bright star Castor. The whole constellation is visible to observers north of latitude 28°S. It ranks 28th of the 88 constellations in size, surpassing better known constellation such as Gemini. The official constellation boundaries, as set by Belgian astronomer Eugène Delporte in 1930, are defined by a polygon of 20 segments.
In the equatorial coordinate system, the right ascension coordinates of these borders lie between 06h 16m 13. 76s and 09h 42m 50. 22s, and the declination coordinates are between +32. 97° and +61. 96°. There are 97 stars within the constellation’s borders brighter than or equal to apparent magnitude 6. 5. The brightest star is Alpha LynCis, with an apparent magnitude of 3. 14, located 203 light-years distant from Earth. Alsciaukat is also a variable star, ranging in brightness by 0.05 magnitude over 25 to 30 days. The second star is 38x 38c, which is rich in double stars and is also known as 31x 31c. This star is twice as massive as the Sun, it has exhausted the hydrogen at its core and has evolved away from the main sequence. The star has swollen to about 55 times the Sun’s radius and is roughly 673 times the luminosity of the Sun. It has a temperature of 3,880 K. The only star with a proper name is Alscieukat, also known as 31 X 31c, located 380 ± 10 light-year from Earth, and also a semiregular variable star. The constellation is most readily observed from the late winter to late summer to northern hemisphere observers, with midnight culmination occurring on 20 January. It covers 545. 4 square degrees and 1. 322% of the night sky, and is usually observed in the Northern Celestial Hemisphere.
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This page is based on the article Lynx (constellation) published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 11, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
