Microscopium (Sukshmdarshak)
Microscopium, resembles the shape of a microscope, when stars in this constellation are imaginarily connected, as per Indian mythology!
Where should I see…Sagittarius, is the constellation which is towards west of Microscopium
constellation. If you move your eyes towards east, you will see another constellation named Pisces Austrinus and Grus. In the North and South of Microscopium, you will find Capricornus and Indus constellations respectively. Microscopium is halfway between celestial equator and South Pole, and so is fully part of Southern Hemisphere.
It covers up 210 square degree area of the sky. Area wise it is 66th largest constellation in the sky.
When and What can I see…We can gaze at this beautiful microscope shape of Microscopium constellation from
April to November, as seen from India.
All you need is your naked eyes other than clear skies to see 39 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 Gamma Microscopii.
Constellations are made up of single, binary (apparent and absolute), multiple and variable stars. Out of total 39 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 |
| 5 | 1 | 1 | 13 |
As per Hindu mythology, there are no such known stories for this constellation.
Deep Sky Objects…
NGC 6923 || Spiral Galaxy
NGC 6925 || Spiral 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:
| Visibility | Galaxy | Open Cluster | Globular Cluster | Nebula | Supernova Remanant |
| Naked eyes | M31 – Andromeda Galaxy | 2 | – | – | – |
| Telescope | M 110 | 1 | – | 1 | – |
| M 32 | |||||
| 13 | |||||
| 20 | 16 | 3 | 1 |