Canes Venatici constellation lies in the northern hemisphere. The constellation’s name means “hunting dogs” in Latin.
The constellation represents the hunting dogs of Boötes the Herdsman, a neighboring constellation. The dogs are known as Asterion and Chara.
The Greek astronomer Ptolemy included the stars of Canes Venatici in the constellation Ursa Major as informes (unformed), but the constellation was not introduced until 1687, when the Polish astronomer Johannes Hevelius created it from the faint stars located under the big bear’s tail.
FACTS, LOCATION & MAP
Canes Venatici is the 38th largest constellation in the sky, occupying an area of 465 square degrees.
It is located in the third quadrant of the northern hemisphere (NQ3) and can be seen at latitudes between +90° and -40°. The neighboring constellations are Boötes, Coma Berenices, and Ursa Major.
Canes Venatici has only one star brighter than magnitude 3.00 and two stars located within 10 parsecs (32.6 light years) of Earth. The brightest star in Canes Venatici is Cor Caroli, Alpha Canum Venaticorum. The nearest star, DG Canum Venaticorum (spectral class M4.0Ve), is only 25.89 light years distant from Earth. The constellation has four stars with known planets.
Canes Venatici contains five Messier objects: M3 (NGC 5272), the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51, NGC 5194, NGC 5195), the Sunflower Galaxy (M63, NGC 5055), M94 (NGC 4736), and M106 (NGC 4258). There is a meteor shower associated with the constellation, the Canes Venaticids, taking place in January.
Canes Venatici belongs to the Ursa Major family of constellations, along with Boötes, Camelopardalis, Coma Berenices, Corona Borealis, Draco, Leo Minor, Lynx, Ursa Major, and Ursa Minor.
Canes Venatici contains the famous stars Cor Caroli and La Superba, as well as a number of interesting deep sky objects, among them the five Messier objects, the Whale Galaxy (NGC 4631), the Hockey Stick Galaxies (NGC 4656 and NGC 4657, also known as the Crowbar Galaxy), the Cocoon Galaxy (NGC 4490), the spiral galaxies NGC 5033, NGC 5005, NGC 4151, and NGC 5371, and the dwarf galaxy NGC 4618.
STORY
In the Middle Ages, Canes Venatici was identified with the two dogs held on a leash by Boötes, the Herdsman, because there was a mistake in the translation of Ptolemy’s Almagest from Greek to Arabic.
In Ptolemy’s text, some of the stars in Boötes represent the Herdsman’s club. The translator loosely translated the Greek word for “club” (Κολλοροβος ) as “the spearshaft with a hook” (“al-`aşā dhāt al-kullāb”). When the Arabic phrase he used was later translated to Latin, the translator mistook one of the words for kilāb, which means “dogs.”
Boötes was depicted with two dogs in 1533 on a map by the German astronomer Peter Apian, and Hevelius decided to define the dogs’ position in the night sky in the 17th century. Hevelius named the northern dog Asterion (“little star” in Greek) and the southern one Chara (“joy”). The name Chara later started to be used specifically to refer to the star Beta CVn.
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