The Sculptor
| Abbreviation: | Scl |
| Genitive: | Sculptoris |
| Origin: | Nicolas Louis de Lacaille, 1756 |
| Fully Visible: | 90°S – 50°N |
French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille (1713–1762) travelled to South Africa in the mid-eighteenth century where he constructed an observatory and spent two years observing the southern skies. Not only did he catalogue nearly 10,000 southern stars, he also surveyed 42 'nebulous' objects and devised over a dozen new constellations. Originally named l’Atelier du Sculpteur or 'The Sculptor's Studio', this faint southern hemisphere constellation, the largest of de Lacaille's inventions, was later Latinised to Apparatus Sculptoris and eventually shortened to just Sculptor.
Notable Features
| Visible Named Stars | ||
|---|---|---|
| The brightest star in the constellation, α Scl, is fourth-magnitude. None of the visible stars in this constellation have an official name. | ||
| Other Interesting Stars | ||
| HD 4208 | Cocibolca | This eighth-magnitude star is known to have at least one exoplanet. It is located near the spiral galaxy C65. |
| Deep Sky Objects | ||
| C65 | Sculptor Galaxy | This edge-on spiral galaxy is bright enough to be seen through binoculars. It is also known by its New General Catalogue number of 253. |
| C70 | One of the closest members of the Local Group of galaxies, C70 is another spiral. It is also known as NGC 300. | |
| C72 | This is a barred spiral galaxy, visible only through telescopes. It is commonly known as NGC 55 and may be gravitationally bound to NGC 300/C70. | |
Copyright © 1995–2023 by L.M. Stockman and David Harper