Octans
Origin
Octans is a faint constellation located in the deep southern sky. Its name is Latin for the eighth part of a circle, but it is named after the octant, a navigational instrument. Octans was one of the constellations created in the 1750s by the French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille depicting scientific instruments. The south celestital pole lies within the constellation of Octans.
Bright Stars
Octans is a generally inconspicuous constellation with only one star brighter than magnitude 4. Hence this constellation is very hard to make out with the naked eye. The brightest star is Nu Octanis at magnitude 3.73. Sigma Octanis shines at magnitude 5.4 about one degree from the south celestial pole but is generally too faint to use for navigation.
Photo of the constellation Octans 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
Octans
Genitive forms
Octantis
English name
The Octant
Pronunciation
OCK-tens
Abbreviation
Oct
Notable Objects
Octans does not have bright deep sky objects suitable for amateur telescopes.
