This constellation was originated in 1777 by Martin Poczobut, director of the
Royal Observatory at Vilna (now Vilnius, Lithuania), to honour his king,
Stanislaw II Poniatowski of Poland – at that time, Lithuania was part of Poland. Poczobut published a catalogue of
16 stars making up the constellation in Cahiers des observations astronomiques faites à l’observatoire royal de Vilna en 1773 (published 1777). The constellation was first depicted in 1778 as le Taureau
Royal de Poniatowski in a revised reprint of Jean Fortin’s Atlas Céleste. The name was later Latinized to Taurus Poniatovii by Bode on his Uranographia of 1801.
The constellation was formed from a V-shaped group of stars that Ptolemy in his
Almagest had classified as being outside Ophiuchus. Poczobut thought that this
group resembled the Hyades cluster that outlines the face of Taurus the bull in
the zodiac. Its stars are now part of Ophiuchus.
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Taurus Poniatovii pictured in the Uranographia of Johann Bode (1801).
© Ian Ridpath. All rights reserved
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