Constellation Chart

The Hare

Lepus, The Hare, is a minor constellation found under the feet of Orion, you can see Rigel (beta Ori) in the upper side of this picture. Stars forming the constellation are about 3rd or 4th magnitude, so it should be hard to imagine the figure of a hare in the southern skies in winter. Lepus is often ignored, as Orion is such a dominating constellation. The constellation has no major myths, yet it's considered the origin of the Lepus: in ancient Sicily island, farmers were troubled by hares that had ravaged the field. They established the figure of a hare just under the Orion as a charm to drive away the annoying hares.

Galaxies In Lepus

M79 (NGC1904)

M79 (NGC1904) is a small globular cluster and is found by doubling the line from alpha to beta Lep. The globular cluster hardly can be seen in winter skies, so M79 is almost only one in winter. M79 has the apparent diameter of about 3 arc minutes, but fairly bright and sufficient to observe with small scopes. You'll be able to recognize the dimmed stellar-like light point, it should be hard to resolve the individual stars. The cluster is estimated about 43 thousand light years away from the solar system.

NGC 1784

NGC 1784 is a fairly unremarkable barred-spiral galaxy at first glance. However, studying even the seemingly common may reveal unique aspects that help forward our understanding of the universe. Recently astronomer Doug Ratay studied this particular galaxy and found some interesting things. By observing this galaxy in radio wavelengths of light he was able to map the distribution of hydrogen gas both in and surrounding NGC 1784. He found that the envelope of gas that surrounds this galaxy extends well beyond (about twice the diameter) the optical image. Furthermore, he found a clump of gas that could be a very small galaxy orbiting NGC 1784 as well as stream of gas encircling another part of the galaxy. All of these features are very similar to our own Milky Way as we have absorbed small galaxies in the past and currently doing the same to the Magellanic clouds right now. Studying how NGC 1784 does this in its environment might help us understand our own. For more information about Doug Ratay's conclusions, visit his research synopsis Here. NGC 1784 is around 100 million light years away.

IC 418

The planetary nebula IC 418 lies about 2,000 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Lepus. This photograph is one of the latest from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, obtained with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2.

A planetary nebula represents the final stage in the evolution of a star similar to our Sun. The star at the center of IC 418 was a red giant a few thousand years ago, but then ejected its outer layers into space to form the nebula, which has now expanded to a diameter of about 0.1 light-year. The stellar remnant at the center is the hot core of the red giant, from which ultraviolet radiation floods out into the surrounding gas, causing it to fluoresce. Over the next several thousand years, the nebula will gradually disperse into space, and then the star will cool and fade away for billions of years as a white dwarf. Our own Sun is expected to undergo a similar fate, but fortunately this will not occur until some 5 billion years from now.

NGC 2017

NGC 2017 is a group of a half dozen stars, all gravitationally bound (h3780, see above). The "cluster" is found seven arc minutes due east of alpha Leporis.