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Sculptor

The Sculptor

Abbreviation:Scl
Genitive:Sculptoris
Origin:Nicolas Louis de Lacaille, 1756
Fully Visible:90°S – 50°N

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. Originally named ‍l’Atelier ‍du ‍Sculpteur or 'The Sculptor's Studio', this faint southern hemisphere constellation, the largest of de Lacaille's inventions, was later Latinised to Apparatus ‍Sculptoris and eventually shortened to just Sculptor.

The constellation of Sculptor

Notable Features

Visible Named Stars
The brightest star in the constellation, α Scl, is fourth-magnitude. None of the visible stars in this constellation have an official name.
Other Interesting Stars
HD 4208 Cocibolca This eighth-magnitude star is known to have at least one exoplanet. It is located near the spiral galaxy C65.
Deep Sky Objects
C65 Sculptor Galaxy This edge-on spiral galaxy is bright enough to be seen through binoculars. It is also known by its New General Catalogue number of 253.
C70 One of the closest members of the Local Group of galaxies, C70 is another spiral. It is also known as NGC 300.
C72 This is a barred spiral galaxy, visible only through telescopes. It is commonly known as NGC 55 and may be gravitationally bound to NGC 300/C70.