Jul 15, 2002

Planetary poop

Posted in Astronomy, Science at 7:42 pm by David Bradley -- Click to comment

I just got a software planetarium to review…very nice program allows you to put in your city or coordinates and then shows you the night sky as it would appear if there were no clouds. There’s the water carrier (Aquarius), the archer, and the various planets. All seems in order, there are a few
constellations I wasn’t familiar with - the hare (turns out to be lepus), the air pump (that’s Antlia) and “poop”. Poop? Nice! I did a quick search on some French astronomy websites and came up with the answer, Poop is what the French call Puppis. This one was originally part of the larger constellation Argo Navis. Indeed, it was the stern, or poop deck of the mythological ship, the Argo. So, not only am I ignorant of the constellations, I don’t know my classics well enough either. But, thankfully the poop isn’t the last turd in constellations.

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