Cetus Constellation

Cetus

Cetus, also known as the whale, and is in the northern region of the sky called the Water. The Water also holds many other constellations that have to do with water. This includes Pisces, Eridanus, and Aquarius. Cetus is visualized as a hybrid creature by the Greeks, which has enormous gaping jaws and the forefeet of a land animal, also with a scaly body with huge coils like a sea serpent. Cetus is in the Greek myth of Andromeda, where Cetus was supposed to swallow Andromeda, which was a sacrifice from Andromeda's mother Cassiopeia. But before he was able to swallow Andromeda, Perseus came out and saved Andromeda.

Cetus is also the fourth largest constellation in the sky covering about 1200 square degrees. Although it is the fourth largest constellation, the stars are not bright at all. It has 15 main stars and only two stars brighter than 3.00m . It is usually best seen in the month of November. The person that found Cetus is David Fabricius, He was the founder of the long-period variable star Mira which is the star that lies in the middle of Cetus.

The Brightest Stars

* Deneb Kaitos is the brightest star in Cetus. It has the visual magnitude of 2.04 and 96.3 light-years from Earth. Deneb Kaitos is usually represented as the southern tail of the Cetus.

* Menkar is the very old red giant star which has the visual magnitude of 2.54 and about 249 light-years away from Earth.

* Mira is a binary star of a red giant and a companion star which is about 420 light-years away from Earth.

* Ceti has a visual magnitude of 3.5 and is one of the nearest stars to our solar system, which is only 11.9 light-years away from Earth.

Deep Sky Objects

Cetus does not lie near the Milky Way so other dim galaxies are more visible. Only a few galaxies and one nebula are located near to make Cetus's tail.

Messier 77 is a spiral galaxy in Cetus, about 47 million light-years from Earth. It also has a visual magnitude of 9.6.

NGC 1055 is 0.5 degrees northeast of Messier 77 and is 52 million light-years away from Earth. It has a diameter of about 115,800 light years. The galaxy is a known radio source.

NGC 1087 is an intermidate spiral galaxy about 80 million light-years away from Earth. The nucleus of the galaxy is very small. It is located near NGC 1090.

Messier 77 NGC 1055