Crater

Origin

Crater is a small constellation located just south of the celestial equator. Crater is one of the 48 constellations cataloged by the second-century astronomer Ptolemy and represents a cup used by Apollo.

Bright Stars

The brightest star is Delta Crateris, an orange giant located 163 light-years away and shining at magnitude 3.6. Alpha Crateris is known as Alkes and is an orange star shining at magnitude 4.1, lying 141 light-years away. Beta Crateris shines at magnitude 4.5 and lies 296 light-years distant. Gamma Crateris shines at magnitude 4.06 and is a double star system that can be resolved by small telescopes. Gamma Crateris lies about 86 light-years away.

Photo of the constellation Crater 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