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The Largest Constellation In the Sky, 000516
By Jeff Kanipe
posted: 05:49 am ET
16 May 2000
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Brought to you by Starry Night Brought to you by Starry Night Tuesday, May 16 Stretched across the southwestern sky as darkness falls is the largest constellation in the heavens: Hydra the Water Snake. From head to tail, Hydra is about 86 degrees in length. That's equivalent to 172 full moons side by side. In all, this constellation comprises over 1,300 square degrees of sky. Unfortunately, Hydra is not very bright. Its alpha star, Alphard, manages to shine at 2nd magnitude, but all of its other primary stars are in the 3rd- to 4th-magnitude range. The head of Hydra, however, forms a distinctive boxy circlet that is easy to see. From there, it's fun to trace the entire snake from star to star with your eyes or binoculars. The diminutive patterns of Corvus the Crow and Crater the Cup lie in a "valley" between Nu and Gamma Hydrae. Both are associated with the Greek star lore of Hydra. Wait until the moon is out of the picture to look for M 83, the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy, located in the western reaches of Hydra. It's one of the brightest galaxies in the southern sky and a beautiful object in a 6-inch (0.15-meter) telescope. Binoculars show it as a large fuzzy oval with a bright stellar center. 
Tonight's moon phase. ** Put the sky in the palm of your hand. Download SPACE.com's Skywatch, along with the latest space news, into your Palm Pilot or other handheld device. **Jeff Kanipe is the author of A Skywatcher's Year, an astronomy guide just published by Cambridge University Press. He is a former editor at Astronomy and StarDate magazines and a writer for the Earth & Sky radio series. The images in Skywatch are produced by Starry Night software.
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