A little ramble through Columba the Dove

 Although a modern constellation, the Greek poet Aratus c315-240 BCE in his Phainomena which is the guide for the appearance of the classical constellation today does mention that there were stars in the area of sky occupied by Columba, however he does not give any name or any kind of figure to them.

Some references today suggest that it was the French astronomer and architect Augustin Royer who first published a star atlas containing the constellation of Columba in 1679.

This does seem a bit strange to me as the Dutch astronomer and map maker Petrus Plancius first depicted the constellation on a map of 1592 where he named it Columba Noachi or Noah’s Dove referring to the dove that told Noah that the great flood was receding.  It was also depicted as such by Bayer in 1603 on his Uranometria star atlas.

Whoever we choose to decide who incorporated Colunba into the sky the fact that it is a modern constellation which means that there are no myths or legends attached to it.

Columba is a winter constellation and can be seen under Lepus the Hare and just to the side of Canis Major. As seen from Britain it is very low in the sky and any hint of mist or haze means that it is not possible to see any of the stars in Columba.

The brightest star is alpha and has a modern name given to it which is Phad the meaning of which seems uncertain. The Chinese called the star Chang Jin which means the Old Folks. It has a magnitude on 2.6, it’s a B class star making it hotter than the Sun and lies at a distance of 260 light years.

Beta Columba which unlike alpha does appear to have an older Arabic name which is Wezn or Weight. Some Arab astronomers called alpha and beta Al Aghribah or the Ravens. Beta has a magnitude of 3.1 it’s a K class giant star cooler than the Sun and is 87 light years away.

The last star I would just like to mention is Mu Columba it’s one of ‘three famous runaway stars’ the others being 53 Aries and AE Auriga. The three stars all seem to be at about the same distance from the region of the Orion Nebula. It is believed that they were all pushed away from the region due to a supernova explosion during the last few million years. Mu has a magnitude of 5.1 which means that it can just be seen with the naked eye under the very best of sky conditions. It’s one of only a few of the super-hot O class stars that are visible to the naked eye, it has a surface temperature of about 33,000 degrees compared to the Sun’s temperature of 5,800 degrees. Mu is around 1,900 light years away.

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