Constellation Chart

The Wolf

The constellation of Lupus, the Wolf, is found at the south of typical constellation in summer, Scorpius. Lupus has fairly lower altitude of meridian; it's not noticeable very well at Japan. But actually, the constellation lies in the Milky Way it is packed with many bright stars. Lupus is narrowly squeezed between Centaurus to the west, Scorpius to the northeast. The constellation itself is fairly difficult to separate from Centaurus; in fact, Lupus had been the part of Centaurus in antiquity. It's considered that almost all of bright stars included in Lupus are belonged to the "Scorpius-Centaurus moving cluster", and they're traveling toward west all in one body. It's very young stellar-group less than five millions years old.

Galaxies In Lupus

NGC5822

NGC5822 (in Lupus, at the top) and Caldwell 88 (NGC5823, at the bottom in Circinus). The Lupus cluster is very large (40'), not condensed, and rich, containing about 150 stars from mags. 9-12.

IC 4406

A dying star, IC 4406, dubbed the "Retina Nebula" is revealed in this Hubble Heritage image.

Like many other so-called planetary nebulae, IC 4406 exhibits a high degree of symmetry; the left and right halves of the Hubble image are nearly mirror images of the other. If we could fly around IC 4406 in a starship, we would see that the gas and dust form a vast donut of material streaming outward from the dying star. From Earth, we are viewing the donut from the side. This side view allows us to see the intricate tendrils of dust that have been compared to the eye's retina. In other planetary nebulae, like the Ring Nebula (NGC 6720), we view the donut from the top.

The donut of material confines the intense radiation coming from the remnant of the dying star. Gas on the inside of the donut is ionized by light from the central star and glows. Light from oxygen atoms is rendered blue in this image; hydrogen is shown as green, and nitrogen as red. The range of color in the final image shows the differences in concentration of these three gases in the nebula.

One of the most interesting features of IC 4406 is the irregular lattice of dark lanes that criss-cross the center of the nebula. These lanes are about 160 astronomical units wide (1 astronomical unit is the distance between the Earth and Sun). They are located right at the boundary between the hot glowing gas that produces the visual light imaged here and the neutral gas seen with radio telescopes. We see the lanes in silhouette because they have a density of dust and gas that is a thousand times higher than the rest of the nebula. The dust lanes are like a rather open mesh veil that has been wrapped around the bright donut.

The fate of these dense knots of material is unknown. Will they survive the nebula's expansion and become dark denizens of the space between the stars or simply dissipate?