Constellation Profile - Caelum

There is one final Lacaille constellation that is visible from Calgary.  It is known as Caelum and it is representative of a chisel in the sky.  This continues the theme of enlightenment laboratory equipment constituting many of the southern constellations.  Unfortunately, Caelum is only partially visible from Calgary as it ranges in declination from 27°S - 48.5°S.  As members of the city of Calgary we are only able to see as far South as 39°S with a clear horizon.  This gives us access to the Bayer stars Gamma, Zeta and Beta Caeli.  If you are out for a walk around Christmas at 11:30pm at night you will have a chance to catch these few stars with binoculars.  You can wait until New Year to catch it at 10:30pm in the evening.  Just to the West of the bright constellation of Canis Major is Columba followed by Caelum.  Use the map below to help you find it.

Star-hop to Caelum

A lot of work throughout the enlightenment period related to sculpting art.  This was done with the aid of a chisel.  This constellation goes hand in hand with Sculptor and continues the great theme.  Lacaille imagined this representation as the below diagram from his planisphere.

Lacaille Caelum

Bode continues to improve upon the images nearly 50 years later in the Uranographia.  His version is shown below.

Uranographia Caelum

Caelum is the 8th smallest constellation in area and the smallest we have discussed so far on this blog.  It is quite a sparse region of space and only has two stars brighter than magnitude 5.0.  The brightest deep sky object is a faint spiral galaxy denoted as NGC 1679.  I suppose it is interesting to note that Caelum hosts NGC 1701, a nondescript galaxy that sits around 30°S.  The only reason I mention this is that the registry number of the USS Enterprise from Star Trek is NCC 1701.  It may be fun trying to find this galaxy but it registers quite close to magnitude 13 low in the horizon.  A long exposure photograph using a properly adjusted mount will likely be the best bet.

Given that the constellation has relatively few bright stars, mapping it was quite easy.  This is shown below.

Caelum

The top three stars in the above map can be seen from Calgary assuming a clear view of the southern horizon.  It is difficult to find much exciting about this constellation.  However, it contains a possible quasar with no host galaxy (HE0450-2958).  Canada's own Universe Today did an article on it back in 2009, the link is below.

https://www.universetoday.com/46503/quasar-caught-building-future-home-galaxy/

 A video of this phenomenon can be found below.

A binary star system known as RR Caeli has been found to have an exoplanet, possibly four times the size of Jupiter orbiting every 11.9 years.

I tried.  I tried to make Caelum interesting.  If you observe a star from the constellation from Calgary, record it in your log book.  You can check one more constellation off your bucket list of observations!  Stay warm while you seek out the chisel in the sky!