Draco Constellation: The Ultimate Guide

In the famous Pyramid of Cheops, small holes resemble pipes thought to ventilate the place. However, in the 60s, astronomers showed that they had a purely observational purpose.

When the pyramids were built, one of these holes pointed to the star Thuban of the constellation of Draco.

Today from that same hole, what is seen is the polar star of the lesser bear. That is because the earth's axis of rotation changes over the years due to the movements of nutation and precession of equinoxes.

Currently, the sky is slightly different from the sky that our ancestors saw thousands of years ago; at the time of Egyptian civilization, the closest star to the north pole was Thuban, and as all the other stars revolved around it, it meant that it was the most important.

Ancient Egyptian astronomers believed that his soul met with the Sun and the Dragon of heaven when the Pharaoh died. Thus, the dragon was the bridge between the heavenly realms of life and death.

Perhaps the most famous story about the constellation Draco is that of the 12 works of Hercules.

The myth tells that as part of his 12 works, Hercules was asked to steal some golden apples from a tree guarded by a dragon called Ladon, which the goddess Hera had placed there so that the Hesperides would not steal its fruits.

In the story, Hercules kills Ladon and gets hold of the apples. At the same time, Hera, saddened by the death of her Dragon, captures her image in the sky forever looking at Hercules.

In 1728, James Bradly discovered the famous "Stellar Aberration," observing the star Eltamin with a magnitude of 2.3, which is the brightest of the entire constellation of Draco. Stellar aberration is that the position of an object, in this case, the stars, has a slight angular deviation in the direction of the observer's motion compared to when the observer is entirely still.

This causes the apparent position of a star in the sky as seen from the earth to varying a little since the speed of the planet around the Sun is not the same.

In comparison, when the earth is closer to the Sun, its speed increases; if we observe a star every night, that change in speed from when the world is more immediate and farther away will cause the apparent position of that star to change.

This discovery would help us better understand the behavior of light and would be fundamental to the development of electromagnetism and even to Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity.

In the modern era, more and more discoveries continue to be made within the region occupied by the constellation of the Dragon.

One of the most recent was the one published by researchers from the University of Geneva, who made observations for seven long years with the SOPHIE spectrograph at the Haute-Provence Observatory.

After the analyses, they discovered that the HD star 158259, part of the constellation Draco has six planets. A super-Earth and five mini-Neptunes are extraordinarily compacted in a space so small that the farthest planet is closer to its star than Mercury is in our Sun.

The constellation of Draco is the eighth largest, so it is not difficult to find in the sky. It is in the third quadrant of the northern hemisphere (NQ3). To observe it, you only have to point our telescope at the latitudes between + 90° and -15°.

It is a circumpollar constellation. Because of this, it is visible from all countries of the northern hemisphere of the earth and some countries of the south, such as Colombia, Venezuela, Tanzania, or Indonesia.

But it is not visible in countries that are too close to the south pole, such as Chile, Argentina, Madagascar, South Africa, southern Australia, New Zealand, much less Antarctica.

Being a constellation very close to the north pole, Draco is visible throughout the year to the countries where it is possible to see it.

Due to its position in the sky, the hours seen in the sky change throughout the year. During the winter, it is visible after sunset and during the summer before dawn.

The best month to see the constellation Draco is in July.

Draco is a northern constellation. It is massive, but its stars are very dim, so to find it, the easiest way is first to locate the Ursa Minor.

If we draw a line from the star Polaris in the Ursa Minor constellation to Hercules, we will find Draco right in the middle of the road.

Draco's related constellations are Coma Berenices, Boötes, Camelopardalis, Canes Venatici, Corona Borealis, Leo Minor, Lynx, Ursa Major, and Ursa Minor.

This whole set of stars is known as the Big House family.

The brightest star of the constellation Draco is Etamin which is very close to the central point of the north pole; because of this, the constellation is visible all year round.

Officially Draco has 211 stars, of which 17 are formally designated by the International Astronomical Union(IAU), which are:

Draco is also known as the home of several deep-sky objects. Deep-sky objects often mean star clusters, nebulae (interstellar cloud bodies), or galaxies. In the case of Draco, it is rich in several notable galaxies and nebulae.

It is a lenticular galaxy with a modest brightness discovered by the famous astronomer Charles Messier in 1871, located 50 million light-years away. It manages to have an apparent magnitude of 10.7.

Although it is colloquially recognized as a lenticular galaxy, more recent observations with optical instruments such as the Hubble Space Telescope have shown that it is a spiral galaxy like the Milky Way, only that it is tilted. We see it from the edge of our line of sight.

That is, if there were intelligent beings in that galaxy that could point their telescopes here, they would see our universe the same way we see theirs, like a line of bright dust in the sky.

The cat's eye nebula is the most famous attraction of the constellation Draco, located at a distance of 3300 light-years; it is 10,000 times brighter than our Sun!

Its fame is because, combined with false coloring and different observation filters, it gives the appearance of an eye.

In reality, it is a planetary nebula that, according to the most recent studies, has at its center two stars, so it is a binary star, which would explain the peculiar shape of the gas clouds surrounding them.

In addition, the observations and simulations that have been made on its expansion rate indicate that it is a reasonably young nebula since everything means that it has an age of only 1000 years.

This peculiar galaxy is at a surprising distance of 420 million light-years from ours. What stands out most about it is an apparent tail of stars 280,000 light-years long.

According to the analyses, everything points to this tail forming when another smaller galaxy approached it, and tidal forces ripped stars from both galaxies, causing that bulge.

The smaller galaxy can still be seen in the images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope at the top of the galaxy's back.

Simulations indicate that, like a tadpole, this galaxy will lose its tail over time because it will clump together to form smaller satellite galaxies orbiting the central galaxy.

Another important aspect is that this galaxy has several star clusters of massive blue stars.

Other essential objects in the constellation Draco are:

• The Draco Dwarf Galaxy: As the name implies, it is a dwarf satellite galaxy of the Milky Way located 260,000 light-years from earth and is one of the faintest galaxies.
• Abell2218: Ubicado is 2,354 million light-years from the Milky Way and is the farthest supercluster of galaxies on record.

Direct observations indicate that galaxies up to 13,000 million years old within the supercluster, making them the most distant galaxies known. According to records, these appeared only 780 million years after the Big Bang.

The constellation Draco has an associated shower of stars, known as the Draconid.

This shower of stars is the product of the fragments left by the periodic comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner, which has a return period of 6621 years.

The shower of stars begins to be seen from October 6 to 10 in the areas near the head of the Dragon of the constellation Draco.

The Draconis's observation peak occurs typically on October 8, and they are observable in the early hours of sunset.

• Draco is a constellation representing a dragon. The name Draco means "the dragon" in Latin. In Greek Mythology, this was the Dragon slain by the warrior Hercules.
• Draco is a circumpolar constellation located in the northern celestial hemisphere. It never sets below the horizon for many observers in the northern hemisphere.
• The brightest star in the constellation is Eltanin. Because it is close to the zenith point straight overhead in London, it is frequently referred to as the Zenith Star.
• The Draco constellation is home to numerous famous stars and Deep Sky Objects. The Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543), the Spindle Galaxy (Messier 102, NGC 5866), and the Tadpole Galaxy.
• The only meteor shower in the constellation is The Draconids.

1. https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/421/1/808/990769
2. https://turismodeestrellas.com/constelacion-de-draco-o-el-dragon