This constellation, which lay just north of
Aries, has a confusing history. It was introduced on a globe of
1612 by the Dutchman Petrus Plancius under the name Apes, the
Bee. The German astronomer Jacob Bartsch changed the name to
Vespa, the Wasp, on his map of 1624. Johannes Hevelius renamed
it Musca on his Firmamentum
Sobiescianum atlas of 1690. It
later became known as Musca Borealis to distinguish it from the
equivalent insect that already existed in the southern sky.
Eventually, though, the northern fly was swatted by
astronomers. To add to the confusion, the same stars were used
in 1674 by the Frenchman Ignace-Gaston Pardies to form Lilium,
the fleur-de-lis of France, but that was a very short-lived
addition.
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Musca Borealis crawls across this chart from the Uranographia of Johann Bode.
© Ian Ridpath. All rights reserved
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