Dorado
Origin
Dorado is a constellation in the far southern sky and can only be seen from near the equator and the southern hemisphere. It contains most of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. Dorado was named in the sixteenth century and refers to mahi-mahi, the common dolphin fish. Some old star charts refer to Dorado as Xiphias, a swordfish.
Bright Stars
Alpha Doradus is the brightest star in Dorado, shining at magnitude 3.3 and 176 light-years away. Alpha Doradus is a blue-white star. Beta Doradus is a Cepheid variable star that ranges from magnitude 3.5 to 4,1. This variation in brightness is visible to naked eye observers and the brightness varies over a period of 9 days and 20 hours. Beta Doradus is a yellow supergiant 1040 light-years from Earth.
Photo of the constellation Dorado 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
Dorado
Pronunciation
doh-RAY-doh
Abbreviation
Dor
Notable Objects
Dorado is home to most of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The LMC is a dwarf galaxy only 180,000 light-years from the Milky Way. Its proximity and large apparent size on the sky make it rich with targets, too many to list here. Scanning the LMC with binoculars or a small telescope is a treat if you are far enough south to see it!
The Tarantula Nebula (30 Doradus) is a large star-forming region. It appears larger than the full Moon and shines at magnitude 8. The Tarantula Nebula is a prime object for small telescopes. NGC 1566 is a magnitude-9.7 spiral galaxy seen nearly face-on. NGC 2164 is a 10th-magnitude star cluster and NGC 2172 is a 12th-magnitude star cluster. Bear in mind that you can resolve individual stars in these clusters even though they are in another galaxy!
