Article of the day for September 7, 2017
The Article of the day for September 7, 2017 is Corvus (constellation).
Corvus is a small constellation in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere. Its name means "raven" in Latin. In the Babylonian star catalogues dating from at least 1100 BCE, it was called the Babylonian Raven. One of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, it depicts a raven, a bird associated with stories about the god Apollo, perched on the back of Hydra the water snake. It is also bordered by the constellations Virgo and Crater. Its four brightest stars, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, and Beta Corvi, form a distinctive quadrilateral in the night sky. With an apparent magnitude of 2.59, Gamma Corvi—also known as Gienah—is the brightest star in the constellation. It is an aging blue giant around four times as massive as the Sun. The young star Eta Corvi has been found to have two debris disks. Three star systems have exoplanets, and a fourth planetary system is unconfirmed. TV Corvi is a dwarf nova—a white dwarf and brown dwarf in very close orbit.
Corvus is a small constellation in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere. Its name means "raven" in Latin. In the Babylonian star catalogues dating from at least 1100 BCE, it was called the Babylonian Raven. One of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, it depicts a raven, a bird associated with stories about the god Apollo, perched on the back of Hydra the water snake. It is also bordered by the constellations Virgo and Crater. Its four brightest stars, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, and Beta Corvi, form a distinctive quadrilateral in the night sky. With an apparent magnitude of 2.59, Gamma Corvi—also known as Gienah—is the brightest star in the constellation. It is an aging blue giant around four times as massive as the Sun. The young star Eta Corvi has been found to have two debris disks. Three star systems have exoplanets, and a fourth planetary system is unconfirmed. TV Corvi is a dwarf nova—a white dwarf and brown dwarf in very close orbit.
