A constellation formed by the Dutch
cartographer and astronomer Petrus Plancius, who took some
stars that Ptolemy in his Almagest had catalogued as being outside Canis
Major. It was first shown in 1592 on a celestial hemisphere
tucked into the corner of Plancius’s first great
terrestrial map. Columba lies behind Argo Navis, the ship,
which Plancius later renamed Noah’s Ark on a globe of
1613.
Columba is supposed to represent
Noah’s dove, sent out from the Ark to find dry land, and
which returned with an olive branch in its beak, a sign that
the Flood was at last subsiding. But those familiar with the story of
Argo might instead think of
it as the dove sent by the Argonauts between the Clashing Rocks
to ensure their safe passage. The constellation’s
brightest star, third-magnitude Alpha Columbae, is called
Phact, from an Arabic name meaning ‘ring dove’.
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Columba with an olive branch in its beak as shown in the Uranographia of Johann Bode.
© Ian Ridpath. All rights reserved
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