Delphinus
Origin
Delphinus, the Dolphin, is one of the 48 constellations described by Ptolemy. The dolphin was considered to be a messenger of the god Poseidon, and there is a story of a pod of dolphins rescuing a famous Greek poet when he was about to be killed at sea.
Bright Stars
The brightest stars in Delphinus are Alpha Delphini, also known as Sualocin (magnitude 3.86), Beta Delphini, also known as Rotanev, (magnitude 3.72), Epsilon Delphini (magnitude 3.98), and Gamma Delphini (magnitude 4.36).
Photo of the constellation Delphinus 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
Delphinus
English name
The Dolphin
Pronunciation
del-FYE-nus
Abbreviation
Del
Notable Objects
A notable object in Delphinus is NGC 6934, a globular cluster 52,000 light-years away. At magnitude 10, this object is just bright enough to be seen with a small telescope or even binoculars in very dark areas.
