Indus
What is Indus?
Constellations· Southern spring · between Grus and Pavo. An 'Indian' drawn by 16th-century Dutch navigators. It has few bright stars, but epsilon Indi, just 12 light-years away, comes with a pair of brown dwarfs and a Jupiter-like planet — a textbook example of a nearby stellar system.
📍 Visible from where you are right now — computed in your browser
bearing · altitude · rise time · best time tonight
Where Indus is in your sky right now: https://nowsky.org/solar/sky?sel=con:Indus — location and time set automatically, no login.
Stars of the figure
| Star | Magnitude |
|---|---|
| The Persian | 3.1 |
| Beta Indi | 3.7 |
The 2 brightest of the 2 stars used in the figure (1 lines). Lower magnitude means brighter.
Constellation basics
| Season | Sep–Oct evenings; not visible from Korea |
|---|---|
| Brightest star | α Indi, mag 3.1 |
| How to find | a long triangle southwest of Grus and east of Pavo |
| Area rank | 49th of 88 |
Figures are representative approximations. Source: compiled from NASA and IAU public data.
Frequently asked
- When can I see Indus?
- Sep–Oct evenings; not visible from Korea.
- How do I find Indus?
- a long triangle southwest of Grus and east of Pavo.
- What is the brightest star in Indus?
- The Persian, magnitude 3.1.
- Where is Indus in the sky right now?
- Open the sky view for your location and time and it shows the position in the sky right now.
The neighbouring planet Webb photographed in 2024 — Epsilon Indi Ab
In 2024 the Webb telescope photographed a planet directly beside Epsilon Indi A in Indus. It is a cold giant of six Jupiter masses, tens of AU from its star, with a temperature around 0 °C. Directly imaged exoplanets are usually young and hot, but this one is billions of years old and cold, the first photographed specimen comparable to the solar system's own Jupiter.
The star, 12 light-years away, is an orange dwarf a little smaller and cooler than the Sun, attended at a distance by two brown dwarfs. The mass and orbit predicted by earlier radial-velocity observations did not match the position in Webb's image, and the orbit was recomputed. This southern constellation, invisible from Korea, holds one of the neighbouring planetary systems most like our own.
The constellation in depth
Indus is one of the twelve southern constellations created from observations by the Dutch navigators Keyser and de Houtman on the East Indies route in the 1590s. It first appeared in Bayer's atlas of 1603, drawn as an indigenous man holding spears and arrows; which people it was meant to represent was never clearly recorded.
Its brightest star, alpha Indi, is an orange giant of magnitude 3.1. The real prize is epsilon Indi, an orange dwarf about 12 light-years away orbited by a pair of brown dwarfs; in 2019 a planet of roughly three Jupiter masses, epsilon Indi Ab, was confirmed, and in 2024 the James Webb telescope imaged it directly.
At declinations of −45° to −75° it cannot be seen from Korea. From the southern hemisphere it stands high on September and October evenings, a long triangle between Grus and Pavo. In the Sky view, choose Sydney or Cape Town on an October evening. With the constellation lines on, the triangle its three stars form becomes obvious.
Related
Figures are representative approximations. Simulated positions use J2000 mean elements.