- Star Tales - Lynx (ianridpath.com)
Johannes Hevelius, the Polish astronomer who introduced this constellation in his star catalogue of 1687, continued to measure star positions with the naked eye long after other astronomers had adopted telescopic sights. The French astronomer Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) wrote in 1644 that Hevelius had the ‘eyes of a lynx’ and this constellation can be seen as an attempt to demonstrate that.[note] Indeed, Hevelius wrote in the Introduction to his catalogue that anyone who wanted to observe it would need the eyesight of a lynx (‘oculos habeat Lynceos’), although he undoubtedly exaggerated the faintness of the 19 stars he catalogued in it, typically by a full magnitude.
- Lynx (constellation) (Wikipedia)
Lynx is a constellation named after the animal, usually observed in the Northern Celestial Hemisphere. The constellation was introduced in the late 17th century by Johannes Hevelius. It is a faint constellation, with its brightest stars forming a zigzag line. The orange giant Alpha Lyncis is the brightest star in the constellation, and the semiregular variable star Y Lyncis is a target for amateur astronomers. Six star systems have been found to contain planets. Those of 6 Lyncis and HD 75898 were discovered by the Doppler method; those of XO-2, XO-4, XO-5 and WASP-13 were observed as they passed in front of the host star.
