Indus is a group of stars.
It looks like a triangle in the sky. You can see it from many places. It is far away in the night sky. It is fun to look for. Can you find it?
Indus is a group of stars in the sky.
It has a shape like a triangle. You can see this shape for much of the year.
Long ago, people drew it on a globe. They drew it as a man with arrows. Some stars in this group are very far away. One star is very close to Earth.
There are also far away galaxies in this area. It is a very big part of the night sky.
Indus is a group of stars in the southern sky.
Its name means "the Indian." It has a shape like a triangle. You can see this shape from the Equator.
People first mapped Indus on a globe in 1598. Petrus Plancius made the map. He used notes from two other men. They were Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman. In old books, Indus was drawn as a man. He held three arrows in one hand. He held one arrow in the other.
Indus has many interesting stars. Alpha Indi is the brightest star. It is an orange giant. It is 101 light-years away. Beta Indi is another orange giant. It is 600 light-years away. Delta Indi is a white star. These three stars form a right-angled triangle.
One star is very close to Earth. It is named Epsilon Indi. It is only 11.8 light-years away. It is an orange dwarf. This star is also a prime candidate for SETI studies. SETI is the search for life in space.
You can also find galaxies here. One is called NGC 7038. It is a spiral galaxy. In 2015, people found a very bright supernova there. A supernova is a massive star explosion. This one was very special. It was much brighter than most others.
Indus is a constellation located in the southern sky.
Its name means "the Indian" in English. It is a long shape that stretches from north to south. Most people at the Equator can see its triangle shape all year. It sits well south of the Tropic of Capricorn. This group of stars does not have any of the 100 brightest stars. Instead, its brightest stars are a bit dimmer.
Many stars make up this constellation. Alpha Indi is the brightest star in the group. It is an orange giant located 101 light-years away. Beta Indi is another orange giant that is 600 light-years away. Delta Indi is a white star 185 light-years from Earth. These three stars form a near-perfect right-angled triangle. Beta Indi marks the right angle in the south-east.
One star named Epsilon Indi is very close to us. It is only about 11.8 light-years away. This star is an orange dwarf. It is slightly smaller and cooler than our Sun. Scientists use it for SETI studies, which is the search for life. It also has a very high proper motion. This means it moves quickly across our sky. It will move into the Tucana constellation around the year 2640.
People first surveyed these stars in the 1590s. Petrus Plancius mapped them on a globe by early 1598. He used work from Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman. In 1603, Johann Bayer included it in his sky atlas. Plancius drew the figure as a man. He showed him holding three arrows in one hand. He also showed him holding one arrow in the other.
There are also huge things in this part of space. You can find galaxies like NGC 7038 and NGC 7049. There is also a dwarf galaxy called IC 5152. It is about 5.5 million light-years away. In 2015, a special event happened in NGC 7038. A superluminous supernova named ASASSN-15lh was detected there. It was almost 50 times more bright than the Milky Way. This explosion happened about 3.82 gigalight-years away.
Indus is a constellation located in the southern sky. Its name translates to "the Indian" in English. It is an elongated shape that stretches from north to south. While it sits well south of the Tropic of Capricorn, its triangular shape is visible from the Equator for most of the year. This constellation has a complex boundary. It does not contain any of the 100 brightest stars in the sky. Instead, its most prominent stars are slightly dimmer.
The stars in Indus form several interesting patterns. The three brightest stars are Alpha Indi, Beta Indi, and Delta Indi. Alpha Indi is an orange giant with a magnitude of 3.1. It is located 101 light-years away from Earth. Beta Indi is another orange giant with a magnitude of 3.7. It is much further away at 600 light-years. Delta Indi is a white star with a magnitude of 4.4. It sits 185 light-years from Earth. These three stars create a near-perfect right-angled triangle. Beta Indi marks the right angle in the south-east.
Other stars in the constellation offer unique scientific data. Epsilon Indi is one of the closest stars to our solar system. It is an orange dwarf located approximately 11.8 light-years away. This star is slightly smaller and cooler than our yellow dwarf Sun. It contains a pair of binary brown dwarfs. Because of this, it is a prime candidate for SETI studies, which is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Epsilon Indi also has a very high proper motion. This means it moves quickly across our sky. It currently ranks ninth in proper motion among visible stars. It will move into the Tucana constellation around the year 2640.
Indus also features binary and variable stars. Theta Indi is a bright binary star system. This means it consists of two stars orbiting each other. It is located 97 light-years away. The primary star is white with a magnitude of 4.5. The secondary star is white with a magnitude of 7.0. Small amateur telescopes can see these two stars separately. T Indi is the only bright variable star in this constellation. A variable star is one that changes in brightness. T Indi is a deeply colored red giant. It is 1900 light-years away and has a period of 11 months.
The history of Indus began with European explorers. It was first professionally surveyed in the 1590s. Petrus Plancius mapped the constellation on a globe by early 1598. He used observations made by Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman. Plancius depicted the figure as a nude male. He showed him holding three arrows in one hand and one arrow in the other. He did not include a bow or a quiver. In 1603, Johann Bayer included the constellation in his sky atlas, Uranometria. Over time, star names have changed. In 1879, Benjamin Gould renamed Nu Indi to Nu Microscopii. This happened because the star was actually part of the Microscopium constellation.
Beyond individual stars, Indus contains vast galaxies. You can find NGC 7038, NGC 7049, and NGC 7090 in this region. There is also a dwarf irregular galaxy called IC 5152. It lies about 5.5 million light-years away. This galaxy is at the edge of the Local Group.
In 2015, a massive event was recorded in the galaxy NGC 7038. The All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae detected a superluminous supernova. This event was named ASASSN-15lh. A team from Peking University studied this explosion. They found it was approximately twice as luminous as any other detected supernova. At its peak, it was almost 50 times more intrinsically luminous than the Milky Way. This event occurred about 3.82 gigalight-years away. This distance means the light traveled for a time roughly half the age of the universe.
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