Grus (Bak)
Grus, resembles the shape of a crane, when stars in this constellation are imaginarily connected, as per Indian mythology!
Where should I see…Microscopium and Indus are towards west of Grus constellation. If you move your
eyes towards east, you will see other constellation named Sculptor and Phoenix. In the North and South of Grus, you will find Pisces Austranis and Tucana constellations respectively. Grus is halfway between celestial equator and South Pole, and so is fully part of Southern Hemisphere.
It covers up 366 square degree area of the sky. Area wise it is 45th largest constellation in the sky.
When and What can I see…We can gaze at this beautiful crane shape of Grus constellation from May to
December, as seen from India.
All you need is your naked eyes other than clear skies to see 62 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 Alnair.
Constellations are made up of single, binary (apparent and absolute), multiple and variable stars. Out of total 62 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 | Tiaki | Alnair | Aldhanab |
| 1 | 2 | 9 | |
| 5 | 2 | 3 | 10 |
As per Hindu mythology, there are no such known stories for this constellation.
Deep Sky Objects…
Galaxies
Grus Quartet || 4 spiral galaxies
IC 5264 || 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. 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 79 such different types of Deep Sky Objects observed. Below is the list of 20 brightest Deep Sky Objects:
IC 5201 || Barred Spiral Galaxy
NGC 7213 || Lenticular Galaxy
NGC 7418 || Spiral Galaxy
NGC 7552 || Barred Spiral Galaxy
| Galaxy | Open Cluster | Globular Cluster | Nebula | Supernova Remnant | ||
| Naked eye visibility | – | – | – | – | – | |
| Visible through Telescope | 19 | – | – | 1 | – | |
| 19 | – | – | 1 | – |
NGC 7421 || Spiral Galaxy
NGC 7424 || Barred Spiral Galaxy
NGC 7462 || Galaxy
Spare Tyre Nebula or IC 5148 || Planetary Nebula