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Sky Chart and Artist Rendering of Hydrus
Origin:
One of the constellations in the southern sky, formally introduced by Johann Bayer in Uranometria in
1603. Its origins date back several years earlier and is attributed
to the Dutch navigator P.D. Keyser. Unlike Hydra, which is knotted
and stretched out, Hydrus is pictured as a coiled snake (perhaps a cobra).
Information:
Hydrus is a relatively large southern constellation which remains
below the horizon for observers north of 30° N lat. For southern
observers, it culminates at 9 pm on December 2 and is fairly easy to find
by a triangle of magnitude 3 and brighter stars and sits just below
Achernar in Eridanus. The southwest
corner of Hydrus is very near the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) even though
the SMC is actually in Tucana. |
