Monoceros

  • Alpha Monocerotiden
  • Monocerotiden
  • Gemini
  • Orion
  • Hare
  • Big Dog
  • Aft deck of the ship
  • Water snake
  • Small Dog

The Unicorn ( Monoceros Greek ) is a constellation south of the celestial equator.

Description

The unicorn is a relatively inconspicuous constellation east of the impressive Orion and north of the bright star Sirius in Canis Major. It contains only two stars that are brighter than the fourth magnitude.

Through the Unicorn, the band of the Milky Way pulls, so it contains a number of nebulous objects such as the open star cluster M50 and the Rosette Nebula.

History

The unicorn is not one of the classic 48 constellations of the ancient world.

It is the Dutch cartographer Petrus Plancius attributed to the 1612 a celestial globe created, on which he abbildete eight new constellations, including Monoceros unicornis.

Jacob Bartsch took it in 1624 in his Planisphaerium Stellaris as Unicornus in his star charts and wrote him a Christian Theme: The unicorn is in the Latin Bible ( Vulgate ) mentioned several times ( Psalmi iuxta LXX 21:22, 28:6, 91:11, Isaiah 34:7 ); modern translations of the Bible speak but of buffalo. Plancius himself left his reasons to introduce these constellations, not. In Bestiaire Divin de Guillaume from the 13th century is that the unicorn is quiet and can be captured when a virgin enters his hunting grounds. The unicorn is supposed to represent Jesus Christ and his horn the Divine truth.

Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers and Ludwig Ideler cautioned, however, that the constellation was described before 1564. According to Joseph Scaliger, it should be mapped to an ancient Persian celestial globe.

Celestial objects

Stars

α Monocerotis is a 144 light-years distant, orange shining star of spectral type K0 III.

γ Monocerotis is 645 light years away and is part of spectral type B2 IV on.

Multiple stars

β Monocerotis is a multiple star system 691 light-years away. Here, orbiting three stars of spectral types B3 a common center. As the stars are apart in a relatively far distance, they can already be seen with a small telescope. William Herschel discovered the system in 1781 and described it as one of the most beautiful sights in the sky.

ε Monocerotis is a 128 light-years distant binary star system. The two components belong to the spectral classes A5 and F5. The system can also be observed with a small telescope.

Variable star

U Monocerotis is a 4,000 light years distant semi- regular variable star that changes brightness over a period of about 92 days.

T Monocerotis is 8,000 light-years away and is part of the luminous group of Cepheids at. Its brightness varies over a period of 27 days.

Both stars can be just perceived during the maximum brightness even with the naked eye. To observe the minimum you need a pair of binoculars.

R Monocerotis is a variable star in the middle of the open cluster NGC 2261st Because of its low brightness of 10 to 12m you need to his observation of an average telescope.

V838 Monocerotis is about 20,000 light years away. In January 2002, the Hubble Space Telescope observed a violent outburst.

Messier and NGC objects

M 50 is an open cluster in 3,000 light- years away. It contains about 100 stars and can already be observed with a prism binoculars. The telescope itself has a very beautiful sight.

The open cluster NGC 2244 is 5,000 light- years away. It can also be observed with binoculars. To the star cluster NGC 2237 lying around, the famous Rosette Nebula. The relatively young, luminous stars in the cluster stimulate the surrounding gas clouds to shine. In a telescope, however, only the densest regions are recognizable. Only on long-exposure photographs complex structures are visible.

NGC 2261 is 3,000 light- years away. In larger telescopes, one of his star seems like a small comet. It is a reflection nebula, which is called " Hubble's Variable Nebula - " or Hubble nebula. Since the exciting star is a Variable and its light is transmitted differently by surrounding dust clouds, the brightness and size of the nebula over weeks and months changed.

NGC 2264 is 3,000 light- years away in a star cluster. Because of its triangular, pointed arrangement it is also called "Christmas Tree Cluster ". Its stars are surrounded by a gaseous nebula, in the dark clouds of dust and gas are located. One of the dark clouds is the so-called because of its shape Cone Nebula.

NGC 2301 is 2,500 light-years away. To resolve the star clusters, one needs a telescope.

NGC 2324 is a star cluster 15,000 light years in distance. In larger telescopes, a large number of stars is visible.

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