Visible at latitudes between +45° and −90°. Best visible at 21:00 (9 p.m.) during the month of January.
Columba is a faintconstellation designated in the late sixteenth century, remaining in official use, with its rigid limits set in the 20th century. Its name isLatin fordove. It takes up 1.31% of the southern celestial hemisphere and is just south ofCanis Major andLepus.
The constellation Columba as it can be seen by the naked eye.
Early 3rd century BC:Aratus's astronomical poemPhainomena (lines 367–370 and 384–385) mentions faint stars where Columba is now but does not fit any name or figure to them.
2nd century AD:Ptolemy lists 48 constellations in theAlmagest. While Columba is not yet among them, several stars south of Canis Major listed in this work will eventually become part of Columba.[3]
c. 150–215 AD:Clement of Alexandria wrote in hisLogos Paidogogos[4]"Αἱ δὲ σφραγῖδες ἡμῖν ἔστων πελειὰς ἢ ἰχθὺς ἢ ναῦς οὐριοδρομοῦσα ἢ λύρα μουσική, ᾗ κέχρηται Πολυκράτης, ἢ ἄγκυρα ναυτική," (= "[when recommending symbols for Christians to use], let ourseals be a dove or a fish or a ship running in a good wind or a musical lyre ... or a ship's anchor ..."), with no mention of stars or astronomy.
1592 AD:[5]Petrus Plancius first depicted Columba on the small celestial planispheres of his large wall map to differentiate the 'unformed stars' of the large constellationCanis Major.[6] Columba is also shown on his smaller world map of 1594 and on early Dutch celestial globes. Plancius named the constellationColumba Noachi ("Noah's Dove"), referring to the dove that gave Noah the information that theGreat Flood was receding. This name is found on early 17th-century celestial globes and star atlases.
The constellation seen as "Columba Noachi" inUrania's Mirror (1825).
1603:Frederick de Houtman listed Columba as "De Duyve med den Olijftack" ("the dove with the olive branch")
1603:Bayer's sky atlasUranometria was published. It includes Columba as Columba Noachi.[7]
1624:Bartschius listed Columba in hisUsus Astronomicus as "Columba Nohae".
1662:Caesius publishedCoelum Astronomico-Poeticum, including an inaccurate Latin translation of the above text of Clement of Alexandria: it mistranslated "ναῦς οὐριοδρομοῦσα" as Latin "Navis coelestis cursu in coelum tendens" ("Ship of the sky following a course in the sky"), perhaps misunderstanding "οὐριο-" as "up in the air or sky" by analogy with οὐρανός = "sky".
1679:Halley mentioned Columba in his workCatalogus Stellarum Australium from his observations onSt. Helena.
1679:Augustin Royer published a star atlas that showed Columba as a constellation.
1712 (pirated) and 1725 (authorized):Flamsteed's workHistoria Coelestis Britannica showed Columba but did not list it as a constellation.
1757 or 1763:Lacaille listed Columba as a constellation and catalogued its stars.
1889: Richard H. Allen,[8] misled by Caesius's mistranslation, wrote that the Columba asterism may have been invented in Roman/Greek times, but with a footnote saying that it may have been another star group.
2019:OSIRIS-REx students discovered ablack hole in the constellation Columba, based on observing X-ray bursts.[9]
Lacaille gave 17 starsBayer designations Alpha through Sigma in 1756, but omitted Zeta, Iota, and Xi, and labelled two stars as Nu and Pi.Francis Baily included Rho Columbae inPuppis and the designation is no longer used. In 1879,Benjamin Gould added Xi Columbae as he felt the star was bright enough to warrant a name.[10]
Columba is rather inconspicuous with the brightest star,Alpha Columbae, being only ofmagnitude 2.7. This, a blue-white star, has a pre-Bayer, traditional, Arabic namePhact (meaning ring dove) and is 268 light-years from Earth. The only other named star isBeta Columbae, which has the alike-status nameWazn. It is an orange-hued giant star of magnitude 3.1, 87 light-years away.[11] The constellation contains therunaway starμ Columbae.ExoplanetNGTS-1b and its star NGTS-1 are in Columba.
Theglobular clusterNGC 1851 appears in Columba at 7th magnitude in a far part of our galaxy at 39,000 light-years away - it is resolvable south of at greatest latitude +40°N in medium-sized amateur telescopes (under good conditions).[11]
^Wagman, Morton (2003).Lost Stars: Lost, Missing and Troublesome Stars from the Catalogues of Johannes Bayer, Nicholas Louis de Lacaille, John Flamsteed, and Sundry Others. Blacksburg,VA: The McDonald & Woodward Publishing Company. pp. 305–07.ISBN978-0-939923-78-6.
