1.2 KiB
| name | created_by | created_date | updated_by | updated_date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ara | skybber | 2021-06-01 20:13:42.313212 | skybber | 2022-01-17 18:21:43.721601 |
A small but quite prominent constellation in the southern sky, not visible here. It lies in the Milky Way south of the constellation Scorpius, between the star θ Scorpii on one side and α Triangulo Australis on the other. Also pointing towards it are the two brightest Centaur stars, Hadar and Rigil Centaurus. The constellation Altar is quite distinctive in shape and resembles a chair or armchair in its outline in the sky. It can easily be found in the Milky Way south of Scorpio, however, if we can see at least to the 65th parallel of the southern declination from our vantage point. It consists of the brightest star β Arae of apparent brightness 2.85mag, an orange giant 600 light years away, followed by α Arae of brightness 2.95mag, γ Arae of 3.34mag, ζ Arae of 3.13mag, δ Arae of 3.62mag, θ Arae of 3.66mag, and η Arae of 3.76mag. Three of them are orange - β, ζ, η. The altar contains several interesting deep-sky objects, dominated by the globular clusters NGC 6352, NGC 6362 and NGC 6397 and the open cluster NGC 6208, which reaches stellar size 7.
