1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Canes Venatici

18979241911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 5 — Canes Venatici

CANES VENATICI (“The Hounds,” or “the Greyhounds”), in astronomy, a constellation of the northern hemisphere named by Hevelius in 1690, who compiled it from the stars between the older asterisms Ursa Major, Boötes and Coma Berenices. Interesting objects in this portion of the heavens are: the famous spiral nebula first described by Lord Rosse; a-Canum Venaticorum, a double star, of magnitudes 3 and 6; this star was named Cor Caroli, or The Heart of Charles II., by Edmund Halley, on the suggestion of Sir Charles Scarborough (1616–1694), the court physician; a cluster of stars of the 11th magnitude and fainter, extremely rich in variables, of the 900 stars examined no less than 132 being regularly variable.