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David

Darling

Cetus

Cetus constellation

Cetus. © 2003 Torsten Bronger.


Cetus (abbreviation: Cet), the Whale or Sea Monster, is a very large constellation on the celestial equator, east of Eridanus and south of Aries and Pisces.

 

Cetus contains the important variables Mira and UV Ceti, the prototype UV Ceti star, and the aptly-named Skull Nebula (NGC 246). It is also home to two particularly interesting galaxies. M77 (NGC 1068) is a Seyfert galaxy, seen almost face-on, that lies about 50 million light-years away and 1° southeast of Delta Cet (magnitude 8.8; size 6.9' × 5.9'; RA 02h 42.7m, Dec -00° 01'). NGC 247 is a large, fairly bright spiral galaxy with a compact nucleus (magnitude 8.8; size 20 × 7.4 arcminutes; RA 00h 47.1m, Dec -20° 46').

 

M77
M77. Hubble Space Telescope image.

 

See below for details of the constellation's brightest stars.

 

Stars brighter than magnitude 4.0
star vis mag abs mag spec type distance (ly) RA (h m s) Dec (° ' ")
Beta (Deneb Kaitos) 2.04 -0.30 K0IIICH 96 00 43 35 -17 59 12
Alpha (Menkar) 2.54 -1.61 M1.5IIIa 220 03 02 17 +04 05 23
Eta (Haratan) 3.45 0.67 K1.5IIICN 118 01 08 35 -10 10 56
Gamma (Kaffaljidhma) 3.47 1.47 A3V 82 02 43 18 +03 14 09
Tau Ceti 3.49 5.68 G8V 11.9 01 44 04 -15 56 15
Iota (Baten Kaitos Shemali) 3.56 -1.18 K1.5III 290 00 19 26 -08 49 26
Theta 3.60 0.87 K0IIIb 115 01 24 01 -08 11 01
Zeta (Baten Kaitos) 3.74 -0.76 K2IIIBa 259 01 51 27 -10 20 06

 


Constellations
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