Apus

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For the high school college credit course, see Advanced Placement United States
History. For other uses, see Apus (disambiguation).
Apus
Constellation
Apus
List of stars in Apus
Abbreviation Aps
Genitive Apodis
Pronunciation /eps/, genitive /pds/
Symbolism The Bird-of-Paradise[1]
Right ascension 13h 51m 07.5441s18h 27m 27.8395s[2]
Declination 67.480079783.1200714[2]
Area 206 sq. deg. (67th)
Main stars 4
Bayer/Flamsteed
stars 12
Stars with planets 2
Stars brighter than 3.00m 0
Stars within 10.00 pc (32.62 ly) 0
Brightest star Aps (3.83m)
Meteor showers None
Bordering
constellations Triangulum Australe
Circinus
Musca
Chamaeleon
Octans
Pavo
Ara
Visible at latitudes between +5 and 90.
Best visible at 21:00 (9 p.m.) during the month of July.
Apus is a small constellation in the southern sky. It represents a bird-of-
paradise, and its name means "without feet" in Greek because the bird-of-paradise
was once wrongly believed to lack feet. First depicted on a celestial globe by
Petrus Plancius in 1598, it was charted on a star atlas by Johann Bayer in his 1603
Uranometria. The French explorer and astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille charted
and gave the brighter stars their Bayer designations in 1756.

The five brightest stars are all reddish in hue. Shading the others at apparent
magnitude 3.8 is Alpha Apodis, an orange giant that has around 48 times the
diameter and 928 times the luminosity of the Sun. Marginally fainter is Gamma
Apodis, another ageing giant star. Delta Apodis is a double star, the two
components of which are 103 arcseconds apart and visible with the naked eye. Two
star systems have been found to have planets.

Contents [hide]
1 History
2 Characteristics
3 Features
3.1 Stars
3.2 Deep-sky objects
4 Notes
5 References
6 External links
History[edit]
Apus was one of twelve constellations created by Petrus Plancius from the
observations of Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman who had sailed on
the first Dutch trading expedition, known as the Eerste Schipvaart, to the East
Indies. It first appeared on a 35-cm (14 in) diameter celestial globe published in
1598 in Amsterdam by Plancius with Jodocus Hondius.[3] De Houtman included it in
his southern star catalogue in 1603 under the Dutch name De Paradijs Voghel, "The
Bird of Paradise",[4] and Plancius called the constellation Paradysvogel Apis
Indica; the first word is Dutch for "bird of paradise". Apis (Latin for "bee") is
presumably a typographical error for avis ("bird").[1]

A black line drawing on faded brownish paper depicting a stylized bird with no feet
and a triangle superimposed on some stars
Detail of Johann Bayer's 1603 Uranometria, showing the constellations Apus,
Chamaeleon, Musca (as "Apis", the Bee), and Triangulum Australe
After its introduction on Plancius's globe, the constellation's first known
appearance in a celestial atlas was in German cartographer Johann Bayer's
Uranometria of 1603.[3] Bayer called it Apis Indica while fellow astronomers
Johannes Kepler and his son-in-law Jakob Bartsch called it Apus or Avis Indica.[5]
The name Apus is derived from the Greek apous, meaning "without feet". This
referred to the Western misconception that the bird-of-paradise had no feet, which
arose because the only specimens available in the West had their feet and wings
removed. Such specimens began to arrive in Europe in 1522, when the survivors of
Ferdinand Magellan's expedition brought them home.[1] The constellation later lost
some of its tail when Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille used those stars to establish
Octans in the 1750s.[1]

Characteristics[edit]
Covering 206.3 square degrees and hence 0.5002% of the sky, Apus ranks 67th of the
88 modern constellations by area.[6] Its position in the Southern Celestial
Hemisphere means that the whole constellation is visible to observers south of 7N.
[6][a] It is bordered by Ara, Triangulum Australe and Circinus to the north, Musca
and Chamaeleon to the west, Octans to the south, and Pavo to the east. The three-
letter abbreviation for the constellation, as adopted by the International
Astronomical Union in 1922, is 'Aps'.[7] The official constellation boundaries, as
set by Eugne Delporte in 1930,[b] are defined by a polygon of six segments
(illustrated in infobox). In the equatorial coordinate system, the right ascension
coordinates of these borders lie between 13h 49.5m and 18h 27.3m, while the
declination coordinates are between 67.48 and 83.12.[2]

Features[edit]
Stars[edit]
See also: List of stars in Apus
Lacaille gave twelve stars Bayer designations, labelling them Alpha through to
Kappa, including two stars next to each other as Delta and another two stars near
each other as Kappa.[5] Within the constellation's borders, there are 39 stars
brighter than or equal to apparent magnitude 6.5.[c][6] Beta, Gamma and Delta
Apodis form a narrow triangle, with Alpha Apodis lying to the east.[10] The five
brightest stars are all red-tinged, which is unusual among constellations.[11]

Alpha Apodis is an orange giant of spectral type K3III located 447 8 light years
away from Earth,[12] with an apparent magnitude of 3.8.[13] It spent much of its
life as a blue-white (B-type) main sequence star before expanding, cooling and
brightening as it used up its core hydrogen.[14] It has swollen to 48 times the
Sun's diameter,[15] and shines with a luminosity approximately 928 times that of
the Sun, with a surface temperature of 4312 K.[16] Beta Apodis is an orange giant
157 2 light years away,[12] with a magnitude of 4.2.[13] It is around 1.84 times
as massive as the Sun, with a surface temperature of 4677 K.[17] Gamma Apodis is a
yellow giant of spectral type G8III located 156 1 light-years away,[12] with a
magnitude of 3.87. It is approximately 63 times as luminous the Sun, with a surface
temperature of 5279 K.[16] Delta Apodis is a double star, the two components of
which are 103 arcseconds apart and visible through binoculars.[18] Delta1 is a red
giant star of spectral type M4III located 760 30 light years away.[12] It is a
semiregular variable that varies from magnitude +4.66 to +4.87,[19] with pulsations
of multiple periods of 68.0, 94.9 and 101.7 days.[20] Delta2 is an orange giant
star of spectral type K3III,[21] located 610 30 light years away,[12] with a
magnitude of 5.3. The separate components can be resolved with the naked eye.[13]

The fifth-brightest star is Zeta Apodis at magnitude 4.8,[11] a star that has
swollen and cooled to become an orange giant of spectral type K1III, with a surface
temperature of 4649 K and a luminosity 133 times that of the Sun.[16] It is 297 8
light-years distant.[12] Near Zeta is Iota Apodis, a binary star system around 1300
light-years distant,[12] that is composed of two blue-white main sequence stars
that orbit each other every 59.32 years. Of spectral types B9V and B9.5 V, they are
both over three times as massive as the Sun.[22]

Eta Apodis is a white main sequence star located 138 1 light-years distant.[12]
Of apparent magnitude 4.89, it is 1.77 times as massive, 15.5 times as luminous as
the Sun and has 2.13 times its radius. Aged 250 200 million years old, this star
is emitting an excess of 24 m infrared radiation, which may be caused by a debris
disk of dust orbiting at a distance of more than 31 astronomical units from it.[23]

Theta Apodis is a cool red giant of spectral type M7 III located 370 20 light
years distant.[12] It shines with a luminosity approximately 3879 times that of the
Sun and has a surface temperature of 3151 K.[16] A semiregular variable, it varies
by 0.56 magnitudes with a period of 119 days[24]or approximately 4 months.[13] It
is losing mass at the rate of 1.1 107 times the mass of the Sun per year through
its stellar wind. Dusty material ejected from this star is interacting with the
surrounding interstellar medium, forming a bow shock as the star moves through the
galaxy.[25] NO Apodis is a red giant of spectral type M3III that varies between
magnitudes 5.71 and 5.95.[26] Located around 883 light-years distant, it shines
with a luminosity estimated at 2059 times that of the Sun and has a surface
temperature of 3568 K.[16] S Apodis is a rare R Coronae Borealis variable, an
extremely hydrogen-deficient supergiant thought to have arisen as the result of the
merger of two white dwarfs; fewer than 100 have been discovered as of 2012. It has
a baseline magnitude of 9.7.[27] R Apodis is a star that was given a variable star
designation, yet has turned out not to be variable. Of magnitude 5.3,[11] it is
another orange giant.

Two star systems have had exoplanets discovered by doppler spectroscopy, and the
substellar companion of a third star systemthe sunlike star HD 131664has since
been found to be a brown dwarf with a calculated mass of the companion to 23 times
that of Jupiter (minimum of 18 and maximum of 49 Jovian masses).[28] HD 134606 is a
yellow sunlike star of spectral type G6IV that has begun expanding and cooling off
the main sequence.[29] Three planets orbit it with periods of 12, 59.5 and 459
days, successively larger as they are further away from the star.[30] HD 137388 is
another starof spectral type K2IVthat is cooler than the Sun and has begun
cooling off the main sequence.[29] Around 47% as luminous and 88% as massive as the
Sun, with 85% of its diameter, it is thought to be around 7.4 3.9 billion years
old.[31] It has a planet that is 79 times as massive as the Earth and orbits its
sun every 330 days at an average distance of 0.89 astronomical units (AU). [32]

Deep-sky objects[edit]
a spherical shaped group of a multitude of stars
Globular cluster IC 4499 taken by Hubble Space Telescope.[33]
The Milky Way covers much of the constellation's area.[34] Of the deep-sky objects
in Apus, there are two prominent globular clustersNGC 6101 and IC 4499and a large
faint nebula that covers several degrees east of Beta and Gamma Apodis.[35] NGC
6101 is a globular cluster of apparent magnitude 9.2 located around 50,000 light-
years distant from Earth,[36] which is around 160 light-years across. Around 13
billion years old, it contains a high concentration of massive bright stars known
as blue stragglers, thought to be the result of two stars merging.[37] IC 4499 is a
loose globular cluster in the medium-far galactic halo;[38] its apparent magnitude
is 10.6.[39]

The galaxies in the constellation are faint.[35] IC 4633 is a very faint spiral
galaxy surrounded by a vast amount of Milky Way line-of-sight integrated flux
nebulaelarge faint clouds thought to be lit by large numbers of stars.[36]