From today's featured articleCorvus is a small constellation in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere. Its name means " raven" in Latin. In the Babylonian star catalogues dating from at least 1100 BCE, it was called the Babylonian Raven. One of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, it depicts a raven, a bird associated with stories about the god Apollo, perched on the back of Hydra the water snake. It is also bordered by the constellations Virgo and Crater. Its four brightest stars, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, and Beta Corvi, form a distinctive quadrilateral in the night sky. With an apparent magnitude of 2.59, Gamma Corvi—also known as Gienah—is the brightest star in the constellation. It is an aging blue giant around four times as massive as the Sun. The young star Eta Corvi has been found to have two debris disks. Three star systems have exoplanets, and a fourth planetary system is unconfirmed. TV Corvi is a dwarf nova—a white dwarf and brown dwarf in very close orbit. ( Full article...)
Recently featured:
Did you know...
|
In the news
On this day...September 7: Independence Day in Brazil ( 1822)
John Shakespeare (d. 1601) · Grandma Moses (b. 1860) · Regina Martínez Pérez (b. 1963)
More anniversaries:
|
A malachite kingfisher (Corythornis cristatus) at Lake Baringo, Kenya. Although many male birds have brighter colours than females, this is not the case with the malachite kingfisher; both sexes are equally colourful. When fishing, these birds often perch less than a metre above the water, diving in once they spot fish, aquatic insects, or crustaceans to prey upon. Photograph: Charles J. Sharp
Recently featured:
|
Wikipedia is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization that also hosts a range of other projects:
Commons Free media repository |
MediaWiki Wiki software development |
Meta-Wiki Wikimedia project coordination |
|||
Wikibooks Free textbooks and manuals |
Wikidata Free knowledge base |
Wikinews Free-content news |
|||
Wikiquote Collection of quotations |
Wikisource Free-content library |
Wikispecies Directory of species |
|||
Wikiversity Free learning materials and activities |
Wikivoyage Free travel guide |
Wiktionary Dictionary and thesaurus |