45Sextans, The Sextant
NAME: Sextans (SEX-tanz)
SEASON: Winter
CULMINATION: midnight, 21 February
ABBREVIATION: Sex
GENITIVE: Sextantis (sex-TAN-tis)
NEIGHBORS: Crt, Hya, Leo
BINOCULAR OBJECTS: none
URBAN OBJECTS: none
Sextans is an extremely faint, mid-size equatorial constellation that ranks 47th in size among the 88 constellations. Sextans covers 314 square degrees of the celestial sphere, or about 0.8%. Its brightest star is barely fourth magnitude. It has only one of those, and only four of the fifth magnitude. The ancients considered the area of Sextans to be just a dark patch of sky, and included it in none of their constellations. Most modern amateur astronomers have seen Sextans dozens or hundreds of times—it lies just south of Regulus ...
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