Thursday, February 26, 2009

constellatoins

more on constellations i general

A constellation is a group of stars that appear to have a physical proximity in the sky. The stars in a constellation are often vastly distant from each other, but they appear close to each other from the perspective of Earth. The word is used colloquially to refer to asterisms: groups of stars that appear to form patterns in the sky; different world cultures have divided the stars into different constellations. However, in modern astronomy the word refers instead to a method of dividing the sky into 88 areas with exact boundaries.

reticulum on wikipedia

Reticulum (pronounced /rɨˈtɪkjələm/) is a small, faint constellation in the southern sky. Its name is Latin for the reticle, an instrument used to measure star positions. It was introduced in the early seventeenth century by Isaac Habrecht, who named it Rhombus.[1] It was later renamed by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in the eighteenth century.