Lupus
Origin
Lupus (Latin for wolf), is a constellation in the southern hemisphere and one of the 48 constellations cataloged by second century astronomer Ptolemy. In ancient times, Lupus was an asterism within Centaurus and consdiered to be an animal killed by the centaur.
Bright Stars
Alpha Lupi is a blue giant star of visual magnitude 2.1. It is a Beta Cephei variable, varying in brightness by 0.03 of a magnitude every 7 hours and 6 minutes.
Most of the bright stars in Lupus are part of the Scorpius-Centaurus OB Association, the closest group of these massive stars.
Photo of the constellation Lupus 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
Lupus
English name
The Wolf
Pronunciation
Loo-PUSS
Abbreviation
Lup
Notable Objects
Lupus contains several globular and open clusters.
NGC 5824 is a 9th-magnitude globular cluster. NGC 5986 is a magnitude-8.0 globular cluster about 34,000 light-years away. NGC 5822 is a magnitude-6.5 open cluster about 2700 light-years away. NGC 5927 is a magnitude-8.9 globular cluster about 25,000 light-years distant.
