Columba is a faint constellation designated in the late sixteenth century, remaining in official use, with its rigid limits set in the 20th century. Its name is Latin for dove. It takes up 1.31% of the southern celestial hemisphere and is just south of Canis Major and Lepus.

History

In the Society Islands, Alpha Columbae (Phact) was called Ana-iva.

Features

Stars

Columba is rather inconspicuous, the brightest star, Alpha Columbae, being only of magnitude 2.7. This, a blue-white star, has a pre-Bayer, traditional, Arabic name Phact (meaning ring dove) and is 268 light-years from Earth. The only other named star is Beta Columbae, which has the alike-status name Wazn. It is an orange-hued giant star of magnitude 3.1, 87 light-years away. The constellation contains the runaway star μ Columbae, which was probably expelled from the ι Orionis system. Exoplanet NGTS-1b and its star NGTS-1 are in Columba.

General radial velocity

Columba contains the solar antapex – the opposite to the net direction of the solar system (noting the local spiral arm of the Milky Way itself is responsible for most of our change of position over time).

Deep-sky objects

NGC 1851 a globular cluster in Columba appears at 7th magnitude in a far part of our galaxy as is 39,000 light-years away - it is resolvable south of at greatest latitude +40°N in medium-sized amateur telescopes (under good conditions).

Citations