Columba, the Dove, is a small southern constellation below Orion and Lepus, the dove that Noah sent out from the ark to find dry land.
At a glance
| stars in the figure | 6 |
|---|---|
| nearest star of the figure | Wazn, 87.2 light-years (26.7 pc) |
| farthest star of the figure | Gamma Columbae, 870 light-years (267 pc) |
| depth | the farthest is 10 × farther than the nearest |
Read off the piece’s own catalogue, the same values it draws with.
About Columba
Columba was introduced by the Dutch cartographer Petrus Plancius from a scatter of stars that the ancient catalogues had left without a figure, south of the hare and the great dog. He made it Noah’s dove, and the name stuck. Its brightest star, Phact, is a hot blue-white star, and Wazn, beside it, is an orange giant.
Columba is best known to astronomers for a star that is not part of its figure: Mu Columbae, a hot young star racing away from the region of Orion, in the opposite direction from another fast star in Auriga. The two are thought to have been flung apart by the break-up of a multiple star system. Columba is best seen on northern winter evenings, low in the south from Europe.
What you see in the piece
With CONSTELLATIONS on, fly out: Wazn is the nearest star of the dove and Gamma Columbae lies far deeper, so the bird that looks compact from Earth becomes a loose trail stretching away from the Sun.
Measured or modelled
That Mu Columbae and its counterpart in Auriga were ejected together from a single encounter is reconstructed by running their motions backwards, so it is an inference rather than an observation.
Questions
What is the brightest star in Columba?
Phact, a hot blue-white star. Wazn, the nearest star of the figure, is 87.2 light-years (26.7 pc) away.
How deep is the figure of Columba?
Its farthest star, Gamma Columbae, is 870 light-years (267 pc) away, 10 × farther than its nearest.