ABSTRACT

This chapter contains a map of Vela and Puppis, with Pyxis (originally Malus, the Mast) and a small section of Carina. A very notable feature of this region is the False Cross; its four stars are Epsilon Carinae; Iota Carinae; Kappa Velorum and Delta Velorum. Many people confuse it with the Southern Cross. The brightest star is Zeta, a very powerful star about 60,000 times as luminous as the Sun, and therefore fully the equal of Rigel; it is about 2,400 light-years away. It is one of the very few bright stars to have an O-type spectrum. One of the most interesting objects in Puppis is the red semi-regular variable L2, near the reddish Sigma. It makes up a pair with its neighbour L1, but the two are not genuinely associated. Antlia, at the top left of the map, covers almost 240 square degrees, but is very barren of interesting objects.