Leo Minor
Origin
Leo Minor is a faint constellation located in the northern hemisphere. The name is Latin for small lion.
Bright Stars
There are only three stars brighter than magnitude 4.5: 46 Leonis Minoris, an orange giant of magnitude 3.8; Beta Leonis Minoris, a binary star at magnitude 4.4; and 21 Leonis Minoris, at magnitude 4.5.
Photo of the constellation Leo Minor 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
Leo Minor
Pronunciation
LEE-oh MY-ner
Abbreviation
LMi
Notable Objects
Leo Minor lies far from the plane of the Milky Way and contains many galaxies of interest to amateur astronomers.
NGC 3432 is a magnitude-11.7 spiral galaxy. NGC 3003 is a magnitude-11.7 edge-on barred spiral galaxy. NGC 3344 is a magnitude-10.5 barred spiral galaxy. NGC 3504 is another barred spiral galaxy shining at magnitude 11.7.
NGC 3486 is a magnitude-10.5 barred spiral galaxy. NGC 2859 is a magnitude-11.8 barred lenticular galaxy.
Leo Minor also contains the unique deep-sky object known as Hanny's Voorwerp, discovered in 2007 by Dutch school teacher Hanny van Arkel.
