Musca

Musca is a Southern Hemisphere constellation otherwise known as the Fly. It is one of twelve constellations created around 1597 by Petrus Plancius (Wikipedia)from observations by the Dutch navigators Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman. Musca remains one of the 88 modern constellations defined by the International Astronomical Union (Wikipedia).

Musca (abbrev. = Mus; genitive = Muscae) covers 138 square degrees or 0.34% of the celestial sphere making it the 77th largest constellation. It contains 62 stars brighter than apparent magnitude 6.5, the brightest star being Alpha Muscae.

For more information see the entries for Musca at Wikipedia and U. Wisconsin. For a chart of Musca, see Mus (IAU).


AstroPixels Links

| Constellations Photo Gallery | Constellations List |Bright Stars Gallery | 50 Brightest Stars List |
 | Open Clusters | Globular Clusters | Diffuse Nebulae | Planetary Nebulae | Supernovae | Galaxies | 
 | Messier Catalog Photo Gallery | Messier Catalog | Caldwell Catalog Photo Gallery | Caldwell Catalog | 
 | AstroPixels Photo Index |