Dorado

Dorado is a famous constellation in the southern sky.

Its name comes from the Spanish word for golden. This refers to the mahi-mahi fish. Some people also call this fish a goldfish. Others have even pictured it as a swordfish. This group of stars is one of 88 modern constellations. It is a very important part of our night sky.

Many bright things live within this star pattern. The brightest star is Alpha Doradus. It is a blue-white star located 176 light-years away. Another star is Beta Doradus. It is a yellow-tinged supergiant star. This is a Cepheid variable star. A variable star changes its brightness over time. Beta Doradus changes every 9 days and 20 hours.

People have been mapping Dorado for a long time. Petrus Plancius named it in the late 16th century. He used observations from Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman. It appeared on a celestial globe in 1597 or 1598. Johann Bayer included it in his 1603 atlas. Later, Johannes Kepler used the name Xiphias for it. This name means swordfish. The name Dorado eventually became the official one.

Dorado is home to many huge objects. It contains most of the Large Magellanic Cloud.

This is a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. It is 25,000 light-years wide. It contains over 10,000 million stars. The galaxy is 179,000 light-years away from us. One star, WOH G64, is a huge binary system. It has a radius of 1,540 solar radii. The Tarantula Nebula is also here. It is 1,000 light-years wide.

You can find many wonders if you look closely. The South Ecliptic pole lies near the fish's head. In 2020, scientists found a new exoplanet there. Its name is TOI-700 d. This planet orbits the star TOI-700. It is the first potentially Earth-like planet found by its discovery satellite. In Chinese astronomy, these stars have different names. They are called the White Patches Attached and the Goldfish. Even United States Navy submarines have used this name.