A small southern constellation, introduced
by the French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille to
commemorate the reticle in the eyepiece of his small telescope
with which he measured star positions from the Cape of Good
Hope in 1751–52. It consisted of a diamond shape formed
by silk threads inserted into the telescope’s eyepiece
which helped him judge the position of stars as they passed
through the field of view. In his Memoir published by the
French Royal Academy of Sciences in 1756 Lacaille described it
as “The little instrument used to construct this
catalogue. It is constructed by the intersection of four lines
drawn from each corner of a square to the middle of the two
opposite sides.”
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Reticulum, shown on Bode’s Uranographia under the name Reticulus.
For Lacaille’s original depiction, see here.
Lacaille’s Reticulum replaced a
previous constellation called Rhombus introduced in 1621 by the
German astronomer Isaac Habrecht. The constellation’s
brightest star, Alpha Reticuli, is of third magnitude, but is
not named.
© Ian Ridpath. All rights reserved
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