Equuleus

Origin

Equuleus is the second-smallest constellation in the night sky and lies just north of the celestial equator. Equuleus is faint with no stars brighter than 4th magnitude. Equuleus was cataloged by the second-century astronomer Ptolemy and means little horse in Latin.

Bright Stars

Alpha Equulei is the brightest star, shining at visual magnitude 3.9. Also known as Kitalpha, it is a yellow star 186 light-years from Earth. Gamma Equulei is a variable star that changes from a visual magnitude of 4.58 to 4.77 over a period of about 12.5 minutes…can you spot the change in brightness? Gamma Equulei has an 11th-magnitude companion 2 arcseconds away.

Photo of the constellation Equuleus 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