Reticulum
What is Reticulum?
Constellations· Southern summer · a small diamond beside the Large Magellanic Cloud. A tiny constellation named for the reticle, the crosshairs in a telescope eyepiece. Four stars form a small diamond beside the Large Magellanic Cloud, and the Sun-like binary zeta Reticuli is its best-known member.
📍 Visible from where you are right now — computed in your browser
bearing · altitude · rise time · best time tonight
Where Reticulum is in your sky right now: https://nowsky.org/solar/sky?sel=con:Reticulum — location and time set automatically, no login.
Stars of the figure
| Star | Magnitude |
|---|---|
| Alpha Reticuli | 3.3 |
| Beta Reticuli | 3.8 |
The 2 brightest of the 2 stars used in the figure (1 lines). Lower magnitude means brighter.
Constellation basics
| Season | Dec–Jan evenings; not visible from Korea |
|---|---|
| Brightest star | α Reticuli, mag 3.3 |
| How to find | between the Large Magellanic Cloud and Achernar |
| Area rank | 82nd of 88 |
Figures are representative approximations. Source: compiled from NASA and IAU public data.
Frequently asked
- When can I see Reticulum?
- Dec–Jan evenings; not visible from Korea.
- How do I find Reticulum?
- between the Large Magellanic Cloud and Achernar.
- What is the brightest star in Reticulum?
- Alpha Reticuli, magnitude 3.3.
- Where is Reticulum in the sky right now?
- Open the sky view for your location and time and it shows the position in the sky right now.
Four supernovae — NGC 1559 in Reticulum
Beside the small diamond of Reticulum lies NGC 1559, a barred spiral galaxy 50 million light-years away. Sitting in front of the Large Magellanic Cloud it has sometimes been taken for a member, but it is a separate galaxy 300 times farther. Four supernovae were observed in it, in 1984, 1986, 2005 and 2009, making it a galaxy of frequent stellar explosions for its size.
The 2005 event was a Type Ia supernova, the explosion of a white dwarf reaching its limiting mass, whose consistent brightness makes it a standard candle for distance. Cepheids were observed in the same galaxy, so it became a check specimen for matching the two methods and joined the list of galaxies in the programme measuring the Hubble constant. Beside the constellation honouring an eyepiece crosshair, a tick mark for the expansion rate of the universe was made.
The constellation in depth
Reticulum commemorates the reticle — the crosshairs in the eyepiece — that Lacaille used to measure star positions from the Cape of Good Hope in the 1750s. It is the seventh-smallest of the 88 constellations, but its four stars make a distinct little diamond. A German astronomer had sketched a rhombus in the same spot back in the 1620s.
Alpha Reticuli, the brightest star, is a yellow giant of magnitude 3.3. Zeta Reticuli, about 39 light-years away, is a wide pair of Sun-like stars you can separate with the naked eye and a frequent candidate in discussions of habitable systems. Epsilon Reticuli hosts a confirmed planet heavier than Jupiter. The whole constellation fits comfortably inside a binocular field.
At declinations of −53° to −67° it is never visible from Korea. From the southern hemisphere, look for the small diamond right beside the Large Magellanic Cloud on December and January evenings. In the Sky view, set Cape Town or Sydney on a December evening and zoom in near the Cloud. The Large Magellanic Cloud shows up alongside it at the basic object level.
Related
Figures are representative approximations. Simulated positions use J2000 mean elements.