Diagram caption: The constellation Vela with its bright stars and surrounding constellations. Vela is surrounded by (going clockwise from the top): Pyxis, Puppis, Carina, Crux, Centaurus and Antlia.

Vela is a southern constellation and thus the whole constellation is visible at some point in the year throughout the southern hemisphere. The whole constellation is also visible from equatorial regions of the northern hemisphere with parts of the constellation visible from most temperate northern hemisphere regions. Vela is best viewed in the evening in the northern hemisphere spring and southern hemisphere autumn.

The planetary nebula NGC 3132 lies in Vela and is marked here with a green circle superimposed on a plus sign. The globular cluster NGC 3201 also lies in Vela and is marked here with a yellow circle with a plus sign superimposed on it. A yellow circle marks the position of the open cluster IC 2391.

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. Vela was previously part of the larger Argo Navis constellation along with Puppis and Carina. As the letter designations for stars were created before this division took place, Greek letter designations are now divided between the three constellations with Vela having stars designated gamma and delta but no alpha or beta. 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. Neither the constellation boundaries, nor the lines joining the stars 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

Related glossary terms: Apparent Magnitude , Celestial Coordinates , Constellation , Declination , Right Ascension (RA)
Categories: Naked Eye Astronomy

Diagram license: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) icons