Sky and Telescope - February 2016 - 50

OBSERVING

Deep-Sky Wonders

Lepus, a Hare-Raising Tale
Beneath Orion's feet we ﬁnd the constellation Lepus,
whose brightest stars shine timidly at 3rd magnitude.
In a similarly shy manner, Lepus plays no prominent
role in Greco-Roman mythology. But there is a cautionary tale attributed to Latin author Gaius Julius Hyginus,
whose life spanned years from BC to AD on our calendar. The story tells of a young man, enamored with
hares, who brought a pregnant one to the Greek island
Leros. When the leverets were born, many of the islanders were also taken with the creatures and began raising
hares themselves. It wasn't long before Leros was teeming with hares. Their destruction of the island's crops
was so severe that famine ensued. With much eﬀort,
the inhabitants ﬁnally drove the hares from their island,
then placed an image of a hare among the stars as a
warning against acquiring too much of good thing.
The best-known deep-sky wonder in Lepus is the
globular cluster Messier 79. It sits 3.9°° from Beta (β)
Leporis, and an imaginary line from Alpha (α) through
Beta points toward it. This makes M79 rather easy to
ﬁnd; in a moderately dark sky it can be seen in binoculars or a 50-mm ﬁnderscope. Through my 9×50 ﬁnder, it
looks like an out-of-focus star with a faint halo. My 130mm refractor at 102× shows a 4½′ globe with a sparsely

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6h 00m

5h 40m

LEPUS

5h 20m

1832

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2017

-20°

b
1964

a
2139

1886
M79

-25°
HD 41312

ESO 489-1

Februar y 2016 sky & telescope

NGC 1886

M79

Look for NGC 1886 about 54′ northwest of M79. This slim edgeon galaxy is a tough target, particularly in suburban skies, but a
careful star-hop and practiced averted vision will help.

populated halo and a very dense, bright, 1½′ core. The
halo is well-resolved into stars, with a relatively bright
one buttoning down its northern edge. The cluster's
interior shows partial resolution almost to its center.
M79 is very pretty in my 10-inch reﬂector at 220×. This
glittering throng of suns grows steeply brighter toward
the center, while its outer reaches sport several radial
arms of stars. Brighter stars adorn the halo's outskirts,
mostly running northwest through east to south. M79
displays fairly distinct levels of crowding. The sparse
halo spans about 5′, the inner halo is about half that
diameter, and the very dense inner core is about 1′ with
star specks tumbled across a blazing backdrop.
The 120,000 stars of M79 dwell 42,000 light-years away
from us. Some sources claim that M79 is part of the Canis
Major Dwarf Galaxy, which is being cannibalized by our
Milky Way, but it's by no means certain that the CMa
Dwarf even exists. Other researchers consider it likely that
the overdensity of stars taken for the dwarf is simply a feature of the Milky Way's galactic warp or spiral structure.

POSS-II / CALTECH / STSCI / PALOMAR OBSERVATORY

Star magnitudes

Can there be too much of a good thing for winter observers?

Sky and Telescope - February 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky and Telescope - February 2016