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Sky Chart and Artist Rendering of Reticulum
Origin:
Introduced by the French astronomer Nicolas
Louis de Lacaille in 1752 while observing the southern sky from the
Cape of Good Hope. Prior to Lacaille, the constellation was known as
the Rhombus but Lacaille renamed it after the cross-hairs (reticle) in his
telescope eyepiece which was use to accurately measure angular
distances. Lacaille originally named the constellation Reticulus
Rhomboidalis but the name was shortened to the one we know
today.
Information:
Reticulum is a small, inconspicuous southern constellation that boasts
little for the small-telescope observer. The stars of Reticulum are
never above the southern horizon for observers north of 30° N lat.
No star in the constellation is brighter than magnitude 4 so the grouping
is difficult to find for northern observers. The constellation
contains few objects of telescopic interest. Reticulum sits in a
star-poor region of the southern sky, west of the Large Magellanic
Cloud. It is southwest of Dorado,
and southeast of Horologium and culminates at
around 9 pm on December 31. |
