Antlia
What is Antlia?
Constellations· Spring evenings · empty sky south of Hydra. Lacaille's tribute to the air pump. A quiet patch of a few fourth-magnitude stars, yet the nearby Antlia galaxy cluster and a dwarf galaxy lie in this direction.
📍 Visible from where you are right now — computed in your browser
bearing · altitude · rise time · best time tonight
Where Antlia is in your sky right now: https://nowsky.org/solar/sky?sel=con:Antlia — location and time set automatically, no login.
Stars of the figure
| Star | Magnitude |
|---|---|
| Alpha Antliae | 4.3 |
The 1 brightest of the 2 stars used in the figure (1 lines). Lower magnitude means brighter.
Constellation basics
| Season | Mar–Apr evenings, low in the south; visible from Korea |
|---|---|
| Brightest star | α Antliae, mag 4.3 |
| How to find | south of Hydra's body, north of Vela |
| Area rank | 62nd of 88 |
Figures are representative approximations. Source: compiled from NASA and IAU public data.
Frequently asked
- When can I see Antlia?
- Mar–Apr evenings, low in the south; visible from Korea.
- How do I find Antlia?
- south of Hydra's body, north of Vela.
- What is the brightest star in Antlia?
- Alpha Antliae, magnitude 4.3.
- Where is Antlia in the sky right now?
- Open the sky view for your location and time and it shows the position in the sky right now.
One of the reddest stars in the sky — U Antliae
Antlia holds a carbon star, U Antliae. Within reach of binoculars at magnitude 5.4, it has more carbon than oxygen in its atmosphere, and soot-like molecules absorb the blue light so that it appears among the reddest stars in the sky. It is an old star at the stage of dredging carbon made in its interior up to the surface, and its colour today speaks of its age.
In 2017 the ALMA radio telescope imaged a thin, round shell of gas around the star, ejected about 2,700 years ago — the trace of a brief episode in which the star threw off material all at once, a picture catching the moment such a star returns carbon to interstellar space. The most rewarding sight in the constellation Lacaille made to honour the vacuum pump is not a galaxy but one red star and the invisible ring around it.
The constellation in depth
Antlia is one of the scientific-instrument constellations Lacaille drew in the 1750s, honouring the air pump that Robert Boyle used in his 17th-century experiments; its original name was the Pneumatic Machine. It is a modest figure of a few fourth-magnitude stars strung across the wide, empty sky south of Hydra. It ranks 62nd in area among the 88 constellations.
Alpha Antliae, the brightest star at magnitude 4.3, is an orange giant about 370 light-years away. In this direction, some 130 million light-years off, lies the Antlia galaxy cluster, one of the nearer clusters to our Local Group, and the Antlia dwarf galaxy, found in 1997, is a faint neighbour of the Local Group. The spiral NGC 2997 is a target for amateur telescopes.
At declinations of −24° to −40° it is visible from Korea, low in the south on March and April evenings: look beneath the long body of Hydra and above Vela. In the Sky view, set Seoul on an April night and look south, or choose a southern city to see it high overhead. Keep the constellation lines on, since its stars are easy to overlook.
Related
Figures are representative approximations. Simulated positions use J2000 mean elements.