Constellations

The Deep Photographic Guide to the
Constellations

The constellation of the month
OCTOBER

Tucana

Watch the big image!
Mark the Deep Sky Objects

Names:

Latin: Tucana (Tuc)
English: Toucan Spanish: Tucán
German: Tukan French: Toucan

One of the most impressive celestial objects of the southern sky is one of our neighboring dwarf galaxies, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). It lies in the southeastern portion of the constellation Tucana. If you did find the SMC, it is not hard to find out the shape of the constellation Tucana just next to it (see lines). The brightest star in Tucana is of visual magnitude 2.9 (alpha Tucanae on the right hand side).

In mid of October the shown field culminates at about 10 pm local time. The declination of the constellation borders reaches from -76 to -57 degrees.

The two globular star clusters and the SMC are already a splendid view in small instruments. Despite their neighborhood in the sky, they are vastly separated in space. The globular star clusters belong to our own galaxy and are at only about a tenth of the distance to the SMC. See also the magnifications.

© all photographs taken by Till Credner and Sven Kohle