Apus is a small constellation in the southern hemisphere

Astronomysema
2 min readApr 14, 2021
Apus is a small constellation in the southern hemisphere

Little Apus
We can find several small constellations in the southern hemisphere. Not much is known about them, but they have their beauty. This is one small constellation located relatively close to the South Pole. Therefore, Apus is visible from all southern latitudes and covers 206 square degrees of sky. Therefore, Apus is the 67th largest constellation in the starry sky. This constellation is not easy to locate, and it is quite an uninteresting constellation. In addition, Apus contains only two stars that are brighter than 4 magnitudes. Apus does not contain Messier objects, but there are interesting deep sky objects in this region.
Bright stars
With approximately the same apparent magnitude, Alpha Apodis and Gamma Apodis are the brightest stars in this constellation. However, they are nice to see. The orange giant star Alpha Apodis is located at a distance of 410 light-years, and has an apparent magnitude of 3.83. Second in brightness is the yellow giant Gamma Apodis star. This star is approximately 160 light-years away from Earth with an apparent magnitude of 3.86. The Apus constellation contains several interesting deep sky objects. However, this is not easy to find. The IC4633 spiral galaxy is interesting. This galaxy is surrounded by an unusual nebulous structure. North of the Gamma Apodis star is the NGC 6101 globular cluster. In addition, in the Apus direction you can find the IC 4499 young globular star cluster.

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