SkyEye

The Compass

French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille (1713–1762) travelled to South Africa in the mid-eighteenth century where he constructed an observatory and spent two years observing the southern skies. Not only did he catalogue nearly 10,000 southern stars, he also surveyed 42 'nebulous' objects and devised over a dozen new constellations. One of those constellations was Le Boussole (later Latinised to Pixis Nautica and then shortened to Pyxis), referring to mariner's compass and not to be confused with the draughtsman's compass. Despite its location in the sky, it is not part of the ancient constellation Argo Navis. The obsolete constellation Lochium Funis, another nautically-themed figure, winds around the compass.