Canes Venatici

Canes Venatici (/ˈkeɪniːz vɪˈnætɪsaɪ/) is one of the 88 constellations designated by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). It is a small northern constellation that was created by Johannes Hevelius in the 17th century. Its name is Latin for 'hunting dogs', and the constellation is often depicted in illustrations as representing the dogs of Boötes the Herdsman, a neighboring constellation.

The stars of Canes Venatici are not bright. In classical times, they were listed by Ptolemy as unfigured stars below the constellation Ursa Major in his star catalogue.

In

When the Arabic text was later translated into Latin, the translator, Gerard of Cremona, mistook كُلاب kullāb ('hook') for كِلاب kilāb ('dogs'). Both written words look the same in Arabic text without diacritics, leading Gerard to write it as Hastile habens canes ('spearshaft-having dogs').^[3] In 1533, the German astronomer

In his star catalogue, the Czech astronomer Antonín Bečvář assigned the names Asterion to β CVn and Chara to α CVn.^[8]

Although the

Canes Venatici is bordered by Ursa Major to the north and west, Coma Berenices to the south, and Boötes to the east. The three-letter abbreviation for the constellation, as adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 1922, is "CVn".^[10] The official constellation boundaries, as set by Belgian astronomer Eugène Delporte in 1930,^[9] are defined by a polygon of 14 sides.

In the equatorial coordinate system, the right ascension coordinates of these borders lie between 12^h 06.2^m and 14^h 07.3^m , while the declination coordinates are between +27.84° and +52.36°.^[2] Covering 465 square degrees, it ranks 38th of the 88 constellations in size.

Prominent stars and deep-sky objects

Stars

Canes Venatici contains no very bright stars. The

• Restoration, as Charles II returned to England to take the throne, but gave no source for this statement, which seems to be apocryphal.^[14] Cor Caroli is a wide double star, with a primary of magnitude 2.9 and a secondary of magnitude 5.6; the primary is 110 light-years from Earth. The primary also has an unusually strong variable magnetic field.^[12]
• main sequence star of magnitude 4.25,^[15] 27 light-years from Earth. Its common name comes from the word for joy.^[12] It has been listed as an astrobiologically interesting star because of its proximity and similarity to the Sun.^[16][17] However, no exoplanets have been discovered around it so far.^[15]
• Y Canum Venaticorum (La Superba) is a semiregular variable star that varies between magnitudes 5.0 and 6.5 over a period of around 158 days. It is a carbon star and is deep red in color,^[12] with a spectral type of C5₄J(N3).^[18]
• AM Canum Venaticorum, a very blue star of magnitude 14, is the prototype of a special class of cataclysmic variable stars, in which the companion star is a white dwarf, rather than a main sequence star. It is 143 parsecs distant from the Sun.^[19]
• RS Canum Venaticorum is the prototype of a special class of binary stars^[20] of chromospherically active and optically variable components.
• R Canum Venaticorum is a Mira variable that ranges between magnitudes 6.5 and 12.9 over a period of approximately 329 days.^[21]

Supervoid

The

• 
  Messier 51, the Whirlpool Galaxy, photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope

  .
• 
  NGC 4248 is located about 24 million light-years away.^[24]
• 
  NGC 4242 is a dim galaxy in Canes Venatici.^[25]
• 
  NGC 4631 photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope.
• 
  NGC 4707 is a spiral galaxy roughly 22 million light-years from Earth.^[26]

Other notable spiral galaxies in Canes Venatici are the

• M63, the Sunflower Galaxy, was named for its appearance in large amateur telescopes. It is a spiral galaxy with an integrated magnitude of 9.0.
• M94 (NGC 4736) is a small face-on spiral galaxy with approximate magnitude 8.0, about 15 million light-years from Earth.^[12]
• NGC 4631 is a barred spiral galaxy, which is one of the largest and brightest edge-on galaxies in the sky.^[27]
• M3 (NGC 5272) is a globular cluster 32,000 light-years from Earth. It is 18′ in diameter, and at magnitude 6.3 is bright enough to be seen with binoculars. It can even be seen with the naked eye under particularly dark skies.^[12]
• M94, also cataloged as NGC 4736, is a face-on spiral galaxy 15 million light-years from Earth. It has very tight spiral arms and a bright core. The outskirts of the galaxy are incredibly luminous in the ultraviolet because of a ring of new stars surrounding the core 7,000 light-years in diameter. Though astronomers are not sure what has caused this ring of new stars, some hypothesize that it is from shock waves caused by a bar that is thus far invisible.^[23]

References

Bibliography

• ISBN 0-486-21079-0
  .
• Apianus, Petrus (1533). Horoscopion generale (in Latin).
• Bečvář, Antonín (1951). Atlas Coeli (II – Catalogue 1950.0 ed.). Czechoslovak Astronomical Society.
• Hevelius, Johannes (1690). Firmamentum Sobiescianum (in Latin).
• Kunitzsch, P. (1959). Arabische Sternnamen in Europa (in German). Otto Harassowitz.
• Ptolemäus, Claudius
  (1974). Der Almagest: Die Syntaxis Mathematica des Claudius Ptolemäus in arabisch-lateinischer Ūberlieferung. Translated by Kunitzsch, P. Otto Harassowitz.
• Ridpath, Ian; Tirion, Wil (2017), Guide to Stars and Planets (5th ed.), Princeton University Press,
  ISBN 9780691177885
• Kunitzsch, P. (1990). Der Sternkatalog des Almagest die arabisch-mittelalterliche Tradition (in German). Vol. II Die lateinische Ūbersetzung Gerhards von Cremona. Otto Harassowitz.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Canes Venatici.

• Photos of Canes Venatici and the star clusters and galaxies found within it on AllTheSky.com
• Clickable map of Canes Venatici
• Photographic catalogue of deep sky objects in Canes Venatici (PDF) Archived 2021-08-07 at the Wayback Machine