Canes Venatici

Canes Venatici /ˈkeɪniːz vɪˈnætɪsaɪ/ is one of the 88 official modern constellations. It is a small northern constellation that was created by Johannes Hevelius in the 17th century. Its name is Latin for 'hunting dogs', and the constellation is often depicted in illustrations as representing the dogs of Boötes the Herdsman, a neighboring constellation. Cor Caroli is the constellation's brightest star, with an apparent magnitude of 2.9. La Superba is one of the reddest stars in the sky and one of the brightest carbon stars. The Whirlpool Galaxy is a spiral galaxy tilted face-on to observers on Earth, and was the first galaxy whose spiral nature was discerned.Messier 51, the Whirlpool Galaxy, photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope.NGC 4248 is located about 24 million light-years away.NGC 4242 is a dim galaxy in Canes Venatici.NGC 4631 photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope.Spiral galaxy NGC 4707 lies roughly 22 million light-years from Earth. Canes Venatici /ˈkeɪniːz vɪˈnætɪsaɪ/ is one of the 88 official modern constellations. It is a small northern constellation that was created by Johannes Hevelius in the 17th century. Its name is Latin for 'hunting dogs', and the constellation is often depicted in illustrations as representing the dogs of Boötes the Herdsman, a neighboring constellation. Cor Caroli is the constellation's brightest star, with an apparent magnitude of 2.9. La Superba is one of the reddest stars in the sky and one of the brightest carbon stars. The Whirlpool Galaxy is a spiral galaxy tilted face-on to observers on Earth, and was the first galaxy whose spiral nature was discerned. The stars of Canes Venatici are not bright. In classical times, they were listed by Ptolemy as unfigured stars below the constellation Ursa Major in his star catalogue. In medieval times, the identification of these stars with the dogs of Boötes arose through a mistranslation. Some of Boötes's stars were traditionally described as representing the club (Greek κολλοροβος, kollorobos) of Boötes. When the Greek astronomer Ptolemy's Almagest was translated from Greek to Arabic, the translator Hunayn ibn Ishaq did not know the Greek word and rendered it as a similar-sounding Arabic word for a weapon, writing al-`aşā dhāt al-kullāb (العصا ذات الكلاب), which means 'the spearshaft having a hook'. When the Arabic text was later translated into Latin, the translator Gerard of Cremona mistook kullāb, meaning 'hook', for kilāb (which looks the same in unvowelled Arabic text), meaning 'dogs', writing hastile habens canes ('spearshaft having dogs').In 1533, the German astronomer Peter Apian depicted Boötes as having two dogs with him. These spurious dogs floated about the astronomical literature until Hevelius decided to specify their presence in the sky by making them a separate constellation in 1687. Hevelius chose the name Asterion (from the Greek 'αστέριον, meaning the 'little star', the diminutive of 'αστηρ the 'star', or adjective meaning 'starry') for the northern dog and Chara (from the Greek χαρά, meaning 'joy') for the southern dog, as Canes Venatici, the Hunting Dogs, in his star atlas.In his star catalogue, the Czech astronomer Bečvář assigned the names Asterion to β CVn and Chara to α CVn. Canes Venatici is bordered by Ursa Major to the north and west, Coma Berenices to the south, and Boötes to the east. The three-letter abbreviation for the constellation, as adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 1922, is 'CVn'. The official constellation boundaries, as set by Eugène Delporte in 1930, are defined by a polygon of 14 sides. In the equatorial coordinate system, the right ascension coordinates of these borders lie between  12h 06.2m and  14h 07.3m, while the declination coordinates are between +27.84° and +52.36°. Covering 465 square degrees, it ranks 38th of the 88 constellations in size. Canes Venatici contains no bright stars, Alpha and Beta Canum Venaticorum being only of 3rd and 4th magnitude respectively. Flamsteed catalogued 25 stars in the constellation, labelling them 1 to 25 Canum Venaticorum, however 1 turned out to be in Ursa Major, 13 was in Coma Berenices and 22 did not exist. The Giant Void, an extremely large void (part of the universe containing very few galaxies) is within the vicinity of this constellation. It may be possibly the largest void ever discovered, slightly larger than the Eridanus Supervoid and 1,200 times the volume of expected typical voids. It was discovered in 1988 in a deep-sky survey. Canes Venatici contains five Messier objects, including four galaxies. One of the more significant galaxies in Canes Venatici is the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51, NGC 5194) and NGC 5195, a small barred spiral galaxy that is seen face on. This was the first galaxy recognised as having a spiral structure, this structure being first observed by Lord Rosse in 1845. It is a face-on spiral galaxy 37 million light-years from Earth. Widely considered to be one of the most beautiful galaxies visible, M51 has many star-forming regions and nebulae in its arms, coloring them pink and blue in contrast to the older yellow core. M51 has a smaller companion, NGC 5195, that has very few star-forming regions and thus appears yellow. It is passing behind M51 and may be the cause of the larger galaxy's prodigious star formation. Other notable spiral galaxies in Canes Venatici are the Sunflower Galaxy (M63, NGC 5055), M94 (NGC 4736), and M106 (NGC 4258). M63, the Sunflower Galaxy, was named for its appearance in large amateur telescopes. It is a spiral galaxy with an integrated magnitude of 9.0. M94 is a small face-on spiral galaxy with an approximate magnitude of 8.0, about 15 million light-years from Earth. NGC 4631 is a barred spiral galaxy, which is one of the largest and brightest edge-on galaxies in the sky.