Encyclopedia > Argo Navis

  Article Content

Argo Navis

Argo Navis (or simply Argo) was a large southern constellation representing the Argo, the ship used by Jason and the Argonauts in Greek mythology.

It is the only one of Ptolemy's list of 48 constellations which is no longer officially recognised as a constellation, having been broken up by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille into Carina (the keel of the ship), Puppis (the poop) and Vela (the sails). Were it still considered a single constellation, it would be the largest of all, being larger than Hydra.

When Argo Navis was split, its Bayer designations were also split. Carina has the Alpha and Beta, Vela has Gamma and Delta, Carina has Epsilon, Puppis has Zeta, and so on.

The constellation Pyxis (the compass) occupies an area which in antiquity was considered part of Argo's mast. But Pyxis is not usually considered part of Argo Navis, and in particular its Bayer designations are separate from those of Carina, Puppis and Vela.



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
UU

... the Unseen University University of Utah Union University[?] This is a disambiguation page; that is, one that just points to other pages that might otherwise ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 74.8 ms