Antlia
Origin
Antlia is a faint constellation in the southern hemisphere that represents an air pump. The constellation was ‘created’ by French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille to commemorate the air pump invented by French astronomer Denis Papin.
Bright Stars
Antlia is a faint constellation with no stars above 4th magnitude. Its two brightest stars are Alpha Antliae and Epsilon Antliae. Both of these are orange stars near the end of their lives.
Photo of the constellation Antlia produced by NOIRLab in collaboration with Eckhard Slawik, a German astrophotographer.
The annotations are from a standardized set of 88 western IAU constellations and stick figures from Sky & Telescope. Please find here a non-annotated version of the image.
Credit: E. Slawik/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M. Zamani
Latin name
English name
Antlia
Pronunciation
ANT-lee-uh
Abbreviation
ANT
Notable Objects
Antila is a small constellation with a lack of bright objects to observe. The brightest galaxy is NGC2997, a face-on spiral. The Antila Dwarf galaxy is a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way discovered in 1997.
