Constellation Profile - Pyxis

The next constellation on our tour of Lacaille's southern sky is Pyxis.  This constellation represents a nautical compass box found on many ships throughout the centuries.  It is fully visible from Calgary as its declination ranges from 17.5°S - 37°S.  It contains quite a few bright naked eye stars which should make it easy to find in the sky.  Looking at the sky maps it seems one can draw a line south across Orion's belt for 50° and land below Alpha Hydrae (Alphard).  As it is quite south in the sky from Calgary it only appears briefly during a given night.  A recommended time to observe it would be around 10:30pm at the beginning of March.  The sky will be dark and the time reasonable for viewing.  A compass may help you locate the compass constellation in the horizon as it should be directly South at this time.  The map below will help to locate the constellation.

Star-hop to Pyxis

Lacaille used a 'Pyxis' on his legendary trip to South Africa and chose to honour it in the sky as its own constellation.  His original representation is shown below.

Lacaille Pyxis

As always, Johann Bode improved on the representation in his great work: Uranographia.  This image is shown below.

Uranographia Pyxis

There are quite a few objects of interest for amateur astronomers.  NGC 2818 is a planetary nebula that lies in the southern reaches of the constellation.  This may be difficult to find without a decent view of the horizon.  This beautiful nebula is framed by an open cluster NGC 2818A which makes it a good target for astrophotographers.

Zeta Pyxidis is in the same field of view (40') of most moderate power telescopes as NGC 2627.  This is an open cluster consisting of around 15 stars.  If you are ever feeling like exploring the south horizon constellations this might be a good target.

A lot of astrophotographers like to go after NGC 2613, a spiral galaxy located in the northeastern hinterlands of Pyxis.  Xi Puppis and Rho Puppis form a line to a magnitude 5 star that is about 1.25° away from this galaxy.  Good luck searching for it with your telescope as it nearly magnitude 11.

Pyxis may have some bright stars but it does not contain very many Bayer stars.  This fact made it easier to put together my map of the constellation as shown below.

Pyxis

I have never really been able to make out the representations in Lacaille's constellations.  How he came up with a compass box and the other shapes eludes me.  The northern constellations seem be easier to see the supposed image in the star.  This may be due to my whole life lived under the northern stars, but I doubt it.

I hope you are enjoying this tour of some southern constellations that most northerners never talk about.  We will continue the tour later in the week with another that is partially visible from Calgary.  After that, you will need to travel south in order to view the rest of them!  Stay warm and keep looking up at the sky (preferably not when a flock of birds fly over).