Apus

Apus Apodis Aps 206 sq °

History and myth

The Bird of Paradise is one of twelve southern constellations drawn from the observations of the Dutch navigators Keyser and de Houtman in the 1590s. The name comes from the birds of paradise of New Guinea, whose skins reached Europe without their feet, which is how the story arose that they never land.

Data

IAU abbreviation: Aps
Genitive: Apodis
Area: 206.3 sq °
Catalogue stars: 36
Of those, named: 0
Brightest star: —
Introduced by: Keyser and de Houtman, 1590s — the southern sky

How this sky works

The sky above you right now — or above any city on any night. The horizon, the compass points, sunset and twilight are worked out for the place you choose; the stars, planets and Moon stand where an eye would see them.

The Milky Way itself is the "Deep Star Maps 2020" panorama by NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio, assembled from the Hipparcos, Tycho-2 and Gaia catalogues: every star's colour and brightness come from measurement. On top of it sits our catalogue: 9096 stars down to sixth magnitude, the figures and official boundaries of all 88 constellations, 333 stars with IAU names and the 110 Messier objects. Tap a star and its card opens; tap empty sky and you get the constellation that point belongs to.

The atmosphere and the landscape are drawn, but not made up: the colour of the sky follows how far below the horizon the Sun is, so in the evening the sunset fades first, then the bright stars appear, and only in full astronomical night the Milky Way. The Sun, Moon and planets are computed in the browser from the astronomy-engine ephemerides for your spot on Earth, precession and nutation included.

On a phone, turn on "Point the phone" and the sky on the screen follows wherever you aim it. The place comes from the browser's time zone without asking for any permission; for an exact one use "My location" or search for a city.

Sources

Positions, magnitudes, spectra and proper motions come from the Bright Star Catalogue, 5th ed. (Hoffleit & Warren, 1991). Distances use Hipparcos parallaxes (ESA, 1997): BSC5's own parallaxes predate the satellite and give negative distances for the far stars. Constellation boundaries are Davenhall & Leggett (1989), precessed here from B1875 to J2000. Star names are the official catalogue of the IAU Working Group on Star Names (CC BY). Accessed through the VizieR service, CDS, Strasbourg.

Panorama: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio, Deep Star Maps 2020 (public domain). Catalogues: Bright Star Catalogue, Hipparcos, IAU-CSN, NGC 2000.0. Ephemerides: astronomy-engine. Cities: GeoNames (CC BY).