What is remarkable about the constellation Sail?

Constellation Sail is located in the southern hemisphere of our sky. Although part of it is possible to observe in Russia. Its area is more than 500 square meters. This means that the constellation Sail is the thirty-second in the list of the most large-scale star clusters. It has 195 visible from our planet to the naked eye of stars.

History of observations

Constellations in the sky in ancient times interested people. Already representatives of the first civilizations peered into the sky, trying to connect the nature of the luminous stars and the essence of things in the world. It is interesting that the constellation of the Sail in the ancient world was considered part of another, more significant cluster of stars, called the "Argo Ship". In this cluster, you can even single out more than a hundred stars with an unaided eye. This name was given to him by the ancient Greeks, who connected these stars with the myth of the march of the Argonauts and Jason behind the golden fleece. The goddess Hera took the ship to heaven, turning it into a constellation, to eternally remind people of the brilliant cruise of the brave Greek travelers to Colchis.

Only in the middle of the 18th century, at the initiative of the French astronomer Nicolas Lacaille, the map of the constellations was slightly transformed and this huge nebula was divided into three. In it, the constellations Kiel, Korma and Sails proper were singled out. A little later, there was also a cluster of Compass. In addition to those noted, the Sail constellation is surrounded by clusters of the Pump, Centauri, and the Southern Cross. The development of technologies, including huge telescopes, as well as a mathematical apparatus, made it possible during this period to make a significant breakthrough in the study and description of the properties of the cosmos. In particular, individual stars of the Parus cluster were carefully examined and studied. So the double star of the constellation consists of the components of the second and fourth magnitude, which are at a distance from each other in forty arc seconds. Moreover, the main component of this pair is itself a double system with two neighboring stars. Both are equal approximate to the thirty masses of our Sun. By the way, the double stars in the constellation Sails in this respect are not unique at all. Rather, on the contrary. Most of the "suns" in our night sky are actually tight systems of two, three, and sometimes four objects. This is not always visible to the naked eye, but can be found in powerful telescopes.

Orbital period of rotation in this pair of stars of the constellation Sails is more than 78 terrestrial days. In the same cluster there is another interesting star with astronomical qualities very entertaining for astrophysicists. Speech about the neutron star-pulsar Vela. Pulsars are extremely unusual cosmic bodies already in that they emit the monstrous power of radio emission. In addition, they continuously rotate. Thus, the radiation falls on an outside observer with a certain periodicity - the star, as it were, flashes. For example, the Vela pulsar from the Sail constellation rotates about 11 times per second. It was discovered by one of the first stars of this type, in 1977. It is interesting that the first detected radio pulses of such stars caused an incredible excitement in the community of scientists, as they were mistaken for the messages of alien civilizations.