You can observe many interesting objects in the night sky of the Northern Hemisphere. One of them is the constellation Lynx. But to see it you need to try hard. Where is it located? When is it noticeable? What stars are included in it? Let's find out.
History and description of the constellation Lynx
The constellation covers an area of 545.4 square degrees and contains 92 stars. Nevertheless, it is rather dim, it does not have bright stars, so it’s not so easy to see it. Like a real lynx, it lurks in the sky, waiting for a good moment to appear.
Its Latin name is Lynx. It is considered young, since it was discovered only in 1660. Some of its stars were discovered by the Greek astronomer and mathematician Claudius Ptolemy, but they never united into a constellation.
In the XVII century, a new "heavenly drawing" was discovered by the Polish astronomer Jan Hevelius, who named it. The photo of the constellation Lynx clearly shows that its outlines do not resemble this animal at all. It stretched a long broken and not very expressive strip. In support of the name, Jan Hevelius said that the constellation is so inconspicuous that you can only see it with the eyes of a lynx.
Lynx constellation stars
The brightest star in the constellation α Lyn with a magnitude of 3.14m. Lynx does not have brighter luminaries. About sixty of its stars are 6 m in size, and the rest shine even fainter. There are no meteor showers within it, but there are other interesting objects. There are many stellar systems in the constellation.
System 38 Lynx - double. It is located 120 light-years from Earth. It consists of white A1 class stars with a brilliance of 3.9 m and 6.6 m. The celestial bodies are 2.7 ″ apart from each other. The star system is located near α Lyn and is the second brightest.
Star 15 Lynx consists of two yellow giants, whose apparent magnitudes are 5.9 and 4.8. She even figures as a meeting place in the Star Trek universe for the heroes of the science fiction novel The Lost Era: The Sundered.
Stars with planets
Some stars of the constellation Lynx are associated with planets, for example, the stars with the poetic name HD 75898. This is a yellow dwarf, 263 light years distant from us. In 2007, a planet was discovered near the star - the gas giant, which is two and a half times larger than Jupiter.
Around the stars XO-5, XO-2, XO-4, planets were also discovered. XO-5 is located more than 800 light-years from us. So far, only one planet has been discovered near the star.
XO-5 is over eight billion years old. This is a yellow dwarf similar to our Sun only slightly colder than it. Its surface temperature is more than five thousand degrees Kelvin, and its approximate magnitude is 12.13.
The star got its name by the name of the XO telescope in the Hawaiian park Haleakala, with which it was studied. In the same telescope, in 2008, her planet - XO-5 b (in the photo below) was first observed. The planet belongs to the class of hot Jupiters. It is located very close to the star and makes a complete revolution around it in just four days.
Clusters and galaxies
Right on New Year's Eve 1788, William Herschel discovered a globular cluster in the constellation Lynx. It is designated as NGC 2419, GCL 12, or C25, and is sometimes called the Galactic Rogue. From our system, the cluster is 300 thousand light-years distant and about the same from the galactic center. From the Earth, it can be observed through a telescope, the aperture of which starts from 150 mm.
Another interesting object in the constellation is a spiral galaxy. It is 16 million light-years distant from Earth. Like the globular cluster in the constellation Lynx, the galaxy can be seen with the help of special equipment.
The galaxy has much in common with the Milky Way. In the sky, you need to look for it near the constellation Cancer. Using an ordinary telescope with an aperture of up to 250 mm, many details will go unnoticed, but the bright core should be clearly visible. It consists of brightly lit old yellow stars.
Observation
Despite the absence of stars brighter than the third magnitude, the Lynx Constellation can still be seen with the naked eye. It is surrounded by Ursa Major, Lesser Lion, Gemini, Charioteer, Cancer, Giraffe and Leo. Its upper edge begins at the constellation of the giraffe and stretches down to the Small Leo and Cancer.
The constellation Lynx can be found, being in latitudes from + 90 ° to -28 °. It is best seen in the winter - from January to mid-February. In the middle lane and in the north of Russia, the Lynx is visible all year round. In summer, in the southern latitudes, it slightly goes beyond the horizon.