This is one of the parts into which the
ancient Greek constellation of Argo Navis, the ship of the Argonauts, was divided by the
French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in his catalogue of
the southern stars, Coelum australe
stelliferum, published in 1763.
Although usually described as the keel, Carina represents the
main body of the ship. It contains the second-brightest star in
the entire sky, Canopus, a creamy white giant just over 300
light years away, that marks the blade of one of the
ship’s two steering oars.
Canopus is not mentioned by Aratus, because
the star was below the horizon from Greece in his day; the name
first appears with Eratosthenes who worked farther south, at
Alexandria in northern Egypt, and hence would have seen it.
Greek writers such as Strabo and Conon tell us that Canopus is
named after the helmsman of the Greek King Menelaus. On
Menelaus’s return from Troy with Helen his fleet was
driven off-course by a storm and landed in Egypt. There Canopus
died of a snake bite; Helen killed the snake, and she and
Menelaus buried Canopus with full honours. On that site grew
the city of Canopus (the modern Abu Qir) at the mouth of the
Nile. Fittingly, modern space probes now use Canopus as a
navigation star. Eratosthenes also knew this star by the name
Perigee, in reference to the fact that it remained close to the
horizon.
The constellation contains a unique star,
Eta Carinae, that flared up to become brighter than Canopus in
1843, but has since faded to the limit of naked-eye visibility.
Astronomers think that it is a young, massive star that will
one day explode as a supernova.
© Ian Ridpath. All rights reserved
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