Chamaeleon () is a small

constellation A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object. The origins of the earliest constellation ...

in the deep southern sky. It is named after the

chameleon Chameleons or chamaeleons (family Chamaeleonidae) are a distinctive and highly specialized clade of Old World lizards with 202 species described as of June 2015. The members of this family are best known for their distinct range of colors, bein ...

, a kind of

lizard Lizards are a widespread group of squamate reptiles, with over 7,000 species, ranging across all continents except Antarctica, as well as most oceanic island chains. The group is paraphyletic since it excludes the snakes and Amphisbaenia altho ...

. It was first defined in the 16th century.

History

Chamaeleon was one of twelve constellations created by

Petrus Plancius Petrus Plancius (; 1552 – 15 May 1622) was a Dutch-Flemish astronomer, cartographer and clergyman. He was born as Pieter Platevoet in Dranouter, now in Heuvelland, West Flanders. He studied theology in Germany and England. At the age of 24 he ...

from the observations of

Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser (occasionally Petrus Theodorus; – 11 September 1596) was a Dutch navigator and celestial cartographer who mapped several constellations on the southern celestial hemisphere. Voyages and star observation Little i ...

and

Frederick de Houtman Frederick de Houtman ( – 21 October 1627) was a Dutch explorer, navigator, and colonial governor who sailed on the first Dutch expedition to the East Indies from 1595 until 1597, during which time he made observations of the southern ce ...

. It first appeared on a 35-cm diameter celestial globe published in 1597 (or 1598) in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban ar ...

by Plancius and

Jodocus Hondius Jodocus Hondius (Latinized version of his Dutch name: ''Joost de Hondt'') (17 October 1563 – 12 February 1612) was a Flemish and Dutch engraver and cartographer. He is sometimes called Jodocus Hondius the Elder to distinguish him from hi ...

Johann Bayer Johann Bayer (1572 – 7 March 1625) was a German lawyer and uranographer (celestial cartographer). He was born in Rain, Lower Bavaria, in 1572. At twenty, in 1592 he began his study of philosophy and law at the University of Ingolstadt, ...

was the first uranographer to put Chamaeleon in a celestial atlas. It was one of many constellations created by European explorers in the 15th and 16th centuries out of unfamiliar Southern Hemisphere stars.

Features

Stars

There are four bright stars in Chamaeleon that form a compact diamond-shape approximately 10 degrees from the

south celestial pole The north and south celestial poles are the two points in the sky where Earth's axis of rotation, indefinitely extended, intersects the celestial sphere. The north and south celestial poles appear permanently directly overhead to observers at ...

and about 15 degrees south of Acrux, along the axis formed by Acrux and

Gamma Crucis Gacrux it is the third-brightest star in the southern constellation of Crux, the Southern Cross. It has the Bayer designation Gamma Crucis, which is Latinised from γ Crucis and abbreviated Gamma Cru or γ Cru. With an apparent visual m ...

Alpha Chamaeleontis Alpha Chamaeleontis, Latinized from α Chamaeleontis, is a solitary star in the southern circumpolar constellation of Chamaeleon. It has an apparent visual magnitude of 4.06 and thus is bright enough to be seen with the naked eye. With a ...

is a white-hued star of magnitude 4.1, 63 light-years from Earth.

Beta Chamaeleontis Beta Chamaeleontis, Latinized from β Chamaeleontis, is the third-brightest star in the southern constellation of Chamaeleon. A solitary, suspected variable star, it is visible to the naked eye as a faint blue-white point of l ...

is a blue-white hued star of magnitude 4.2, 271 light-years from Earth.

Gamma Chamaeleontis Gamma Chamaeleontis, Latinized from γ Chamaeleontis, is a solitary star located in the southern circumpolar constellation of Chamaeleon. It can faintly be seen with the naked eye on a dark night, having an apparent visual magnitude of 4.1 ...

is a red-hued giant star of magnitude 4.1, 413 light-years from Earth. The other bright star in Chamaeleon is

Delta Chamaeleontis The Bayer designation Delta Chamaeleontis (δ Cha / δ Chamaeleontis) is shared by two star systems, in the constellation A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms a perceived pattern or outli ...

, a wide

double star In observational astronomy, a double star or visual double is a pair of stars that appear close to each other as viewed from Earth, especially with the aid of optical telescopes. This occurs because the pair either forms a binary star (i.e. a bi ...

. The brighter star is Delta² Chamaeleontis, a blue-hued star of magnitude 4.4. Delta¹ Chamaeleontis, the dimmer component, is an orange-hued giant star of magnitude 5.5. They both lie about 350 light years away. Chamaeleon is also the location of Cha 110913, a unique dwarf star or proto solar system.

Deep-sky objects

In 1999, a nearby

open cluster An open cluster is a type of star cluster made of up to a few thousand stars that were formed from the same giant molecular cloud and have roughly the same age. More than 1,100 open clusters have been discovered within the Milky Way galaxy, an ...

was discovered centered on the star η Chamaeleontis. The cluster, known as either the

Eta Chamaeleontis cluster Eta (uppercase , lowercase ; grc, ἦτα ''ē̂ta'' or ell, ήτα ''ita'' ) is the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the close front unrounded vowel . Originally denoting the voiceless glottal fricative in most dialects, ...

or Mamajek 1, is 8 million years old, and lies 316

light years A light-year, alternatively spelled light year, is a large unit of length used to express astronomical distances and is equivalent to about 9.46 trillion kilometers (), or 5.88 trillion miles ().One trillion here is taken to be 1012 ...

from Earth. The constellation contains a number of

molecular clouds A molecular cloud, sometimes called a stellar nursery (if star formation is occurring within), is a type of interstellar cloud, the density and size of which permit absorption nebulae, the formation of molecules (most commonly molecular hydroge ...

(the Chamaeleon dark clouds) that are forming low-mass

T Tauri star T Tauri stars (TTS) are a class of variable stars that are less than about ten million years old. This class is named after the prototype, T Tauri, a young star in the Taurus star-forming region. They are found near molecular clouds and ide ...

s. The cloud complex lies some 400 to 600

from Earth, and contains tens of thousands of solar masses of gas and dust. The most prominent cluster of T Tauri stars and young B-type stars are in the Chamaeleon I cloud, and are associated with the reflection nebula IC 2631. Chamaeleon contains one planetary nebula, NGC 3195, which is fairly faint. It appears in a telescope at about the same apparent size as

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but slightly less than one-thousand ...

Equivalents

Chinese astronomy Astronomy in China has a long history stretching from the Shang dynasty, being refined over a period of more than 3,000 years. The ancient Chinese people have identified stars from 1300 BCE, as Chinese star names later categorized in the tw ...

, the stars that form Chamaeleon were classified as the Little Dipper (小斗, ''Xiǎodǒu'') among the Southern Asterisms (近南極星區, ''Jìnnánjíxīngōu'') by

Xu Guangqi Xu Guangqi or Hsü Kuang-ch'i (April 24, 1562– November 8, 1633), also known by his baptismal name Paul, was a Chinese agronomist, astronomer, mathematician, politician, and writer during the Ming dynasty. Xu was a colleague and collaborato ...

. Chamaeleon is sometimes also called the Frying Pan in Australia.

Citations

References

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External links

The Deep Photographic Guide to the Constellations: Chamaeleon

"The eta Chamaeleontis Cluster: A Remarkable New Nearby Young Open Cluster" (Mamajek, Lawson, & Feigelson 1999)

"WEBDA open cluster database entry for Mamajek 1"

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chamaeleon Southern constellations Constellations listed by Petrus Plancius Dutch celestial cartography in the Age of Discovery Astronomy in the Dutch Republic 1590s in the Dutch Republic