Centaurus (Narashva)
Centaurus, resembles the shape of a centaur (half human, half horse) ,when stars in this constellation are imaginarily connected, as per Indian mythology!
Where should I see…Antila, Vela and Carina are the constellations towards west of Andromeda constellation. If you move your eyes towards east, you will
see another constellation named Lupus and Circinus. In the North of Centaurus, you will find Hydra and in South, Musca and Crux. Centaurus is halfway between celestial equator and South Pole, and so is fully part of Southern Hemisphere.
It covers up 1060 square degree area of the sky. Area wise it is 9th largest constellation in the sky.
When and What can I see…We can gaze at this beautiful princess shape of centaur constellation from January to August, as seen from India.
All you need is your naked eyes other than clear skies to see 297 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 Rigel Kentaurus or Toliman. Constellations are made up of single, binary (apparent and absolute), multiple and variable stars.
Out of total 297 stars of different types, here is the list of 20 brightest stars as per their nature:
| Binary / Multiple Star system | Variable Stars | Binary and Variable Stars | Single stars |
| Rigel Kentaurus | 3 | Hadar | 6 |
| Menkent | – | 5 | – |
| 3 | – | – | – |
| 5 | 3 | 6 | 6 |
As per Hindi mythology, there are no such known stories for this constellation.
Deep Sky Objects…
Lindsay Shapely Ring or AM 0644-741 || Lenticular Galaxy
NGC 3918 or Blue Planetary || Planetary Nebula
Centaurus A or NGC 5128 || 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. Many are different types of nebulae 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 198 such different types of Deep Sky Objects observed. Out of these one is very interesting and; famous Andromeda spiral galaxy visible even through naked eye. It is the farthest naked eye object visible at 2.2 million light year distance.
Below is the list of 20 brightest Deep Sky Objects:
MGC 4603 || Spiral Galaxy
NGC 4696 || Elliptical Galaxy
NGC 5253 || Irregular Galaxy
| Galaxy | Open Cluster | Globular Cluster | Nebula | Supernova Remnant | |
| Naked eye visibility | – | Pearl Cluster | Omega Centauri | 1 | – |
| – | 6 | – | – | – | |
| Visible through Telescope | Centaurus A Galaxy | 7 | 1 | 1 | – |
| 1 | – | – | – | – | |
| 2 | 14 | 2 | 2 | – |
NGC 5291 || Interacting Galaxy
NGC 4945 || Barred Spiral Galaxy
NGC 5090 || Elliptical Galaxy & NGC 5091 || Spiral Galaxy