Norma the Level – Southern
Hemisphere
A
superfluous constellation invented in the 1750s by Nicolas Lacaille
who populated the southern skies with several constellations
representing scientific instruments, in this case the Surveyor’s
Level.
Originally
the stars of which it is made were attached to Ara the Altar and
Lupus the Wolf. Since Lacaille’s time the outline of Norma has
altered, so that the stars that were formerly alpha and beta have now
been transferred to the neighbouring constellation of Scorpius.
Norma
does lie in a rich region of the Milky Way.
The
only star worthy of mention is gamma2 a K0
giant star with a magnitude of 4.0 it
has a surface temperature of 4,300’C and lies at a distance of 129
light years.
There
are many clusters in the constellation but most are faint
The brightest is
NGC 6087 sometimes known as the S Normae Cluster due to the brightest
star in the cluster
being the variable star S Normae. NGC 6087 is an open cluster
containing around 40 stars The cluster appears at magnitude 5.4 with
a diameter of 14 light years and is around 3,300 light years away.
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