The constellation Parus is located in the southern hemisphere of our sky. Although part of it is possible to observe in Russia. Its area is more than 500 square meters. This means that the constellation Parus is the thirty-second in the list of the most large-scale star clusters. It has 195 stars visible from our planet with the naked eye.
Observation history
Constellations in the sky in ancient times interested people. Already the representatives of the first civilizations peered into the sky, trying to connect the nature of luminous stars and the essence of things in the world. Interestingly, the constellation of the Sail in the ancient world was considered part of another, more significant cluster of stars, called the "Ship of Argo." In this cluster, you can even identify with a naked eye more than a hundred stars. This name was given to him by the ancient Greeks, who associated these stars with the myth of the campaign of the Argonauts and Jason behind the Golden Fleece. Goddess Hera lifted the ship into heaven, turning it into a constellation, to always remind people of the brilliant campaign of the brave Greek travelers to Colchis.
Only in the middle of the XVIII century, on the initiative of the French astronomer Nicolas Lacaille, the constellation map was slightly transformed and this huge nebula was divided into three. The constellations of Kiel, Korma and Sail proper were highlighted in it. A little later, the Compass cluster was also identified. In addition to those noted, the constellation Sail is surrounded by clusters of Pump, Centaurus, and the Southern Cross. The development of technologies, including huge telescopes, as well as the mathematical apparatus, allowed during this period to make a significant breakthrough in the study and description of the properties of space. In particular, individual stars of the Sail cluster were carefully examined and studied. So a binary star at the constellation consists of components of the second and fourth magnitude, which are at a distance of forty angular seconds from each other. Moreover, the main component of this pair is itself a binary system with two neighboring stars. Both of them are equal to approximately thirty masses of our Sun. By the way, binary stars in the constellation Parus in this respect are not unique at all. Rather, the opposite. Most of the "suns" in our night sky are actually close systems of two, three, and sometimes four objects. This is not always visible with the naked eye, but can be detected with powerful telescopes.
The orbital period of rotation in this pair of
stars of the constellation Parus is more than 78 Earth days. In the same cluster is another interesting star with very interesting qualities for astrophysicists. This is a Vela neutron pulsar star. Pulsars are extremely unusual
cosmic bodies already in that they emit the monstrous power of radio emission. In addition, they rotate continuously. Thus, the radiation falls on an outside observer with a certain periodicity - the star, as it were, blinks. For example, the pulsar Vela from the constellation Sails rotates about 11 times per second. It was discovered one of the first among the stars of this type in 1977. It is interesting that the first detected radio pulses of such stars caused incredible excitement in the community of scientists, as they were mistaken for messages from alien civilizations.