Triangulum Australe – the southern triangle

There’s a barely noticed constellation down under called Triangulum Australe, the southern triangle. Connecting three dots to make a triangle is pretty much the minimum effort for making a star group.

The first person to go to all that effort was an Italian named Amerigo Vespucci in the early 1500’s. He’s also the guy that figured out Columbus hadn’t actually found some part of Asia, and that there was a whole new continent in between. That’s why they named it America. I don’t know why they didn’t name it Vespuccia.

The brightest of the three stars is Alpha, an orange beauty which would stretch all the way out to the orbit of Venus if it were somehow allowed to replace our sun. It would also appear about 5,500 times brighter than our sun in which case you might as well live in Phoenix. It’s proper name is Atria which has no meaning. It’s just a less fussy way of saying Alpha Triangulum Australe and there’s nothing funny about that.

The second brightest star is Beta, which is a binary system except that it’s not. The dim companion is probably just photo-bombing the shot but then as you know that’s what our dimmer companions sometimes do.

The third member, Gamma, is drawing very little attention to itself other than pouring out massive amounts of heat and light in all directions.

The fourth star in the triangle, Kappa, is yellow and must be ignored for trigonomic integrity.

The constellation includes several cepheid variable stars. These are “standard candles” which means not only are their parts interchangable, but we know how far they are away from us. We know this thanks to Henrietta Leavitt who helped us discover just how big the universe is, and how insignificant and small and unnoticed we might feel, especially if we are a female scientist in the 19th century.

If you are truly desperate for something more to look at while cruising through the deeper sky here, there is ESO 69-6. It’s a pair of rat-tail galaxies. These two cosmic dance partners are ripping each other’s clothes off as if no one is watching.

Carpe Noctem.