Carina
- Latin:
- “Keel”
Carina, constellation in the southern sky that stretches from about 7 to 11 hours right ascension and at about 60° south in declination. Its brightest star is Canopus, the second brightest star in the sky, with a magnitude of −0.7. Eta Carinae is a variable star that was even brighter than Canopus in the mid-19th century and is expected to become a supernova in the next several thousand years. This constellation was originally part of the much larger Argo Navis, which represented the ship Argo, in which Jason and the Argonauts sailed to retrieve the Golden Fleece. The French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille, in his Coelum Australe Stelliferum (“Star Catalog of the Southern Sky,” 1763), broke up Argo Navis into the smaller constellations of Carina, Puppis, and Vela.
