Camelopardalis (Giraffe)
Camelopardalis, resembles the shape of a giraffe, when stars in this constellation are imaginarily connected, as per Indian mythology!
Where should I see…Cassiopeia and Perseus, are the constellations towards west of Camelopardalis.
If you move your eyes towards east, you will see another constellation named Draco and Ursa Major. In the North of Camelopardalis, you will find Cepheus and Ursa Minor while in South, Auriga and Lynx respectively. Camelopardalis is near North Pole, and so is fully part of Northern Hemisphere.
It covers up 757 square degree area of the sky. Area wise it is 18th largest constellation in the sky.
When and What can I see…We can gaze at this giraffe shape of Camelopardalis constellation from August
to April, as seen from India.
All you need is your naked eyes other than clear skies to see 156 stars of this constellations, as they are the one which are brighter than the lower limit of our naked eyes (i.e. 6.5 apparent magnitude) to see faintest stars.. The brightest star of this constellation is Beta Cam.
Constellations are made up of single, binary (apparent and absolute), multiple and variable stars.
Out of total 156 stars of different types, here is the list of 20 brightest stars as per their nature:
| Binary / Multiple Star system | Variable Stars | Binary / Multiple and Variable Stars | Single stars |
| 6 | 3 | 5 | 6 |
As per Hindi mythology, there are no such known stories for this constellation.
Deep Sky Objects…
IC 342 || The Hidden Galaxy || Intermediate Spiral Galaxy
NGC 2403 || Intermediate Spiral Galaxy
NGC 1569 || Dwarf Irregular Galaxy
NGC 2366 || Magellanic barred irregular dwarf galaxy
All the stars that we see naked eyes, all belong to our own, Milky way galaxy (Akash Ganga Tara Vishv). Bright stars can be seen naked eye and faint one through telescope. But the curtain of sky that we see in 2D is actually a huge universe we are talking about, with 3 dimension. There are many nebulous objects visible in every constellations. They differ widely by distances and nature. Like Emission Nebula, Reflecting Nebula, Absorption Nebula, Star Birth Nebula, Supernova Remnants (SNR) and Open Stars Cluster which are within the disk of our own Milky Way galaxy. Globular cluster are also found, which are in the halo of our galaxy and some most distant objects like galaxies are also visible through telescope. Such objects are defined as “Deep Sky Objects”.
In this constellation there are 81 such different types of Deep Sky Objects observed. Below is the list of 20 brightest Deep Sky Objects:
| Galaxy | Open Cluster | Globular Cluster | Nebula | Supernova Remnant | ||
| Naked eye visibility | – | – | – | – | – | |
| Visible through Telescope | 16 | 2 | – | 2 | – | |
| 16 | 2 | – | 2 | – |