Where is crux constellation

The brightest is Acrux. With a visual magnitude of 0. It is a multiple star system located approximately light years from Earth. The second brightest star is Mimosa with a magnitude of 1. Gacrux is the third brightest star with a magnitude of 1. It is a red giant star that lies 88 light years from our solar system. Crux contains no Messier objects but it does contain a few notable deep-sky objects. The Coalsack Nebula is a famous dark nebula that can easily be seen as a dark patch against a region of the Milky Way.

The Crux constellation includes a cross asterism made up of four stars, although a fifth star is often added. It should be said that this cross is not the constellation as a whole, only part of the constellation. The Crux constellation contains tens of main stars while this cross is just a segment of those stars. This is why some people call it the cross constellation or the southern cross.

Nevertheless, the main stars of the Crux constellation are the ones that make up the cross asterism. These are the brightest stars of the constellation. The brightest of them all is called Acrux.

This is the star you can find on many national flags, and it represents some states in many countries. The other stars that make up the cross asterism are called:. The Crux constellation is the smallest of the 88 modern constellations recognised today. It measures in at just 68 square degrees. The Taurus constellation wraps around Crux on three of its boundaries, which is probably why the Greeks used to class these stars as part of Taurus.

The other nearby constellation to Crux is called Musca, which means fly in Latin. The answer is no. There are still times of the year when you can see the cross constellation from the UK — but you need to know when to go searching for it. The star has an optical companion, a class G8 star with a magnitude of It is a Gamma Cassiopeiae type variable star, which is to say a shell star that has a circumstellar gas disk around the equator.

BZ Crucis is an X-ray source. It has an apparent magnitude of 5. It is located behind the Coalsack Nebula. NGC is a red giant star almost 20 times as massive as Jupiter.

It is 7, light years distant. It has an apparent magnitude of 7. A companion star, believed to be a brown dwarf, was discovered in The Coalsack Nebula is a famous dark nebula, easily seen as a large dark patch in the southern region of the Milky Way. It stretches across nearly seven by five degrees of the sky, crossing over into the neighbouring constellations, Centaurus and Musca. It is between 30 and 35 light years in radius. The nebula is about light years distant from Earth. The Coalsack is one of the most prominent dark nebulae visible to the unaided eye.

The Coalsack is located approximately light-years away from Earth in the southern part of the constellation of Crux the Southern Cross. This seemingly starless dark patch is actually an opaque interstellar dust cloud that obscures the light of the background Milky Way stars. Dust grains in the cloud redden the starlight that reaches us by absorbing blue light preferentially, so that the red stars shimmering in the northern and darkest part of the Coalsack appear more crimson than they would in the absence of this dust.

The first European to see this remarkable object was probably the Spanish navigator and explorer Vincente Yanez Pinzon when he sailed to the South American coast in The Incas tell that the god Ataguchu, in a fit of temper, kicked the Milky Way and a fragment flew off, forming the Small Magellanic Cloud where it landed on the sky, and leaving the black mark of the Coalsack behind.

Beware of Inca gods in a bad mood! Another famous sight seen from southern latitudes — though it can creep into view in tropical northern latitudes — is the Southern Cross, or Crux. This cross-shaped constellation has assumed great significance in the cultures of the Southern Hemisphere, even as far back as prehistoric times.

The European Southern Observatory ESO has also acknowledged the significance of Crux as the foremost constellation of the southern skies, and has proudly incorporated the cross-shaped symbol into the ESO logo. As a result of its size, the Coalsack Nebula was known in pre-historic times in the southern hemisphere. In Aboriginal astronomy in Australia, the nebula represents the head of the Emu, the bird associated with several local creation myths.

Fujii — The Jewel Box is shown just right of center, above the dark nebula called the Coalsack in this picture of the southern sky. BZ Crucis is also an X-ray source, having an apparent magnitude of 5. NGC is a possible red giant star, located at around 7, light-years away from us. It is a member of the open cluster NGC The constellation of Crux is quite devoid of deep-sky objects , however, the Coalsack Nebula, and the Jewel Box open star cluster are worth observing. The Coalsack Nebula, also known as the Southern Coalsack, or designated as Caldwell 99, is the most prominent dark nebula in the sky, being visible to the naked eye as a dark patch obscuring a section of the Milky Way.

More accurately, it obscures the stars as they cross their southernmost region of the sky, east of Acrux, which is the brightest southern pointer star of the southern cross asterism. The Coalsack Nebula stretches from 7 o by 5 o , having a radius between 30 to 35 light-years, and overlapping somewhat into the neighboring constellations of Centaurus and Musca. The Coalsack Nebula is situated at around light-years away from us, however, it was known since pre-historic times in the southern hemisphere.

The Jewel Box Cluster has an estimated age of around 14 million years, being among the youngest clusters ever discovered, having around stars.

The total integrated magnitude of the Jewel Box cluster is 4. The cluster can only be seen from the southern hemisphere. The constellation of Crux is well-known in many southern cultures.

The ancient Greeks saw Crux before its stars dropped below the horizon, for Europe, and most of the northern hemisphere. Some Christians saw significance in this, and thus linked the disappearance of the celestial cross from the sky, with the crucifixion of Christ. Crux Constellation The constellation of Crux is the smallest out of all the 88 modern constellations, stretching for around 68 square degrees in the sky.

Keep reading for even more interesting facts and information. Home » Constellations » Crux Constellation. There are no Messier objects in the constellation of Crux. Though Crux is the smallest constellation in the sky, it contains numerous interesting stars apart from the ones that make up the Southern Cross asterism , and other deep-sky objects such as Coalsack Nebula or the Jewel Box Cluster.

Currently, there are only two stars in Crux that have been discovered to host planets. The brightest star in the constellation of Crux is Acrux, which is a triple star system having a visual magnitude of 0.

Within the borders of Crux, there are around 49 stars that are brighter or equal to apparent magnitude 6. Unusually, a total of 15 of the 23 brightest stars in Crux are spectrally blue-white B-type stars.