Indus - The Indian

Indus covers a small region of the sky south of Microscopium and north of Octans. The stars in this constellation are very faint. Indus is visible only to southern observers.

History and Mythology

Named by Johann Bayer in the early 17th century, Indus does not have a mythology. It was named to celebrate the Indian nations of the Americas. With the European conquest of the New World, Bayer feared that its "Indian" people would not be able to continue their way of life.

Notable Objects

There are no stars brighter than 3rd magnitude in Indus. Alpha Indi is the brightest star in the constellation with a magnitude 3.2 and a distance of 101 light-years.

Epsilon Indi is 4th magnitude, and it is one of the nearest stars to the Sun at a distance of 11.8 light-years. It is an orange dwarf with a fifth the luminosity of the Sun, and is one of the few stars that can be seen with the naked eye which is intrinsically fainter than the Sun. Invisible to all but the largest telescopes, Epsilon Indi is orbited by a pair of brown dwarfs - objects larger than planets, but too small to ignite fusion and become true stars.

There are no visible star clusters in Indus. There is the 12th magnitude planetary nebula IC 4699. Two galaxies worth noting are 11th magnitude NGC 7090, which is a barred spiral, and the slightly fainter NGC 7205 at magnitude 11.4.