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This page describes an image Sextans Constellation Map

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Diagram caption: The constellation Sextans with its brighter stars and surrounding constellations. Sextans is surrounded by (going clockwise from the top): Leo, Hydra and Crater. Sextans is a small constellation with relatively few bright stars.

Sextans spans the celestial equator and thus parts of the constellation are visible at some point in the year across the Earth. The whole constellation is visible in all but the most arctic and most antarctic regions. Sextans is best viewed in the evening in the northern hemisphere spring and southern hemisphere autumn.

The lenticular galaxy NGC 3115 lies in Sextans. It is marked here with a red ellipse.

The y-axis of this diagram is in degrees of declination with north as up and the x-axis is in hours of right ascension with east to the left. The sizes of the stars marked here relate to the star's apparent magnitude, a measure of its apparent brightness. The larger dots represent brighter stars. The Greek letters mark the brightest stars in the constellation. These are ranked by brightness with the brightest star being labeled alpha, the second brightest beta, etc., although this ordering is not always followed exactly. The dotted boundary lines mark the IAU's boundaries of the constellations and the solid green lines mark one of the common forms used to represent the figures of the constellations. The blue line at the top of the diagram marks the ecliptic. Neither the constellation boundaries, nor the lines joining the stars, nor the ecliptic, appear on the sky.


Diagram credit: Adapted by the IAU Office of Astronomy for Education from the original by the IAU and Sky & Telescope. Credit Link

Diagram translation status: Not yet approved by a reviewer
Related glossary terms: Apparent Magnitude , Celestial Coordinates , Celestial Equator , Constellation , Declination , Lenticular Galaxy , Leo , Right Ascension (RA) , دایرةالبروج
Categories: Naked Eye Astronomy

Diagram license: Creative Commons تخصیص 4.0 بین‌المللی (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons تخصیص 4.0 بین‌المللی (CC BY 4.0) icons

In Other Languages

انگلیسی: Sextans Constellation Map
ایتالیایی: Mappa della costellazione del Sestante

The diagram captions presented on the OAE website were written, translated and reviewed by a collective effort from the OAE, the OAE Centers and Nodes, the OAE National Astronomy Education Coordinators (NAECs) and other volunteers. You can find a full list of credits for our translation project here. All media file captions are released under a Creative Commons CC BY-4.0 license and should be credited to "IAU OAE". The media files themselves may have different licenses (see above) and should be credited as listed above under "credit".

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