Profile / Characteristics
| English translation | Latin declination and pronunciations | Size/ °² | # stars (visible) |
| the Hunting Dogs | Canes Venatici – CANE-eez (CAN-eez) ve-NAT-iss-eye Canum Venaticorum – CANE-um (CAN-um) ve-nat-ih-COR-um | 465 | 59 |
Main Star (brightest one):
| Designation | HIP number | name in IAU-CSN | brightness |
| α CVn | HIP 63125 | Cor Caroli | 2.88 mag (V) |
Our (modern) Explanation
Constellation of the two hunting dogs (of Bootes) was invented by Hevelius in the 1690s. Prior to Hevelius’s invention, this region of the sky was unnamed; there had been no ancient Greek constellation. Only two decades earlier, in the early 1660s, English royallist had named the lonely brightest star ‘Cor Caroli’.
Ancient Globes
Farnese Globe
Kugel Globe
Mainz Globe
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Ancient Lore & Meaning
Aratus
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Reference:
English translation by Douglas Kidd (1997).
Aratus: Phaenomena, Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries, Series Number 34
Pseudo-Eratosthenes
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References:
French translation by:
Jordi Pàmias i Massana and Arnaud Zucker (2013). Ératosthènes de Cyrène – Catastérismes, Les Belles Lettres, Paris
English version in:
Robin Hard (2015): Eratosthenes and Hyginus Constellation Myths with Aratus’s Phaenomena, Oxford World’s Classics
Early Modern Interpretation
Contemporary
As one of their first tasks in the 1920s, the newly founded International Astronomical Union (IAU) established constellation standards. The Belgian astronomer Eugène Delporte was assigned to the task to define borders of constellations parallel to lines of declination and right ascension. They were accepted by the General Assembly in 1928. The standardized names and abbreviations had already been accepted in 1922 and 1925.
