One of the 12 constellations introduced at
the end of the 16th century by the Dutch navigators Pieter
Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman after their pioneer
mapping of the southern skies. Grus represents a long-necked
wading bird, the crane. The constellation was first shown on a
celestial globe by Petrus Plancius in 1598 under the name Krane
Grus, respectively Dutch and Latin for crane, although on a
later Plancius globe issued posthumously in 1625 it bore the
alternative title of Phoenicopterus, the flamingo. In his
southern star catalogue of 1603 de Houtman called it Den
Reygher, the heron.
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Grus cranes its neck in the Uranographia of Johann Bode.
Grus was formed from stars south of Piscis
Austrinus, the Southern Fish. The constellation’s
brightest star, of second magnitude, is named Alnair, from an
abbreviation of the Arabic meaning ‘the bright one from
the fish’s tail’, for the Arabs had extended the
tail of the southern fish into this region. There are no
legends associated with Grus, but in Greek mythology the crane
was sacred to Hermes.
© Ian Ridpath. All rights reserved
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