Lacerta - The Lizard

Learn about the constellation Lacerta - The Lizard, location, facts, mythology, meteor showers and deep space objects.

Lacerta is one of the 88 official constellations acknowledged by the International Astronomical Union.

Location: Northern Circumpolar 22h RA 45° Dec

Lacerta was created by the Polish astronomer Johannes Hevelius in 1687. It is a small, faint constellation that is sometimes referred to as Little Cassiopeia because its brightest stars form a "W" shape, just like the stars in the considerably larger Cassiopeia constellation.

It doesn't contain any bright stars, no Messier object, no galaxy brighter than 14.5m, no globular clusters and not a single named star. Correspondingly it is rather difficult to find. The northern part lies on the Milky Way. Lacerta is located between Cygnus, Cassiopeia and Andromeda in the northern celestial sphere.

Mythology

Being a modern constellation there is no mythology surrounding Lacerta.

Deep Space Objects

NGC 7243 (Caldwell 16) is an open star cluster in Lacerta. It has an apparent magnitude of 6.4 and is approximately 2,800 light years distant from the solar system. It lies in the vicinity of Alpha Lacertae. The cluster has an estimated age of just over a billion years. Most of the stars in it are white and blue.

In this table, the observation month represents the month in which the object reaches its highest point in the sky. It can also be viewed a few months before and after depending on your location. Direction is the compass direction in which the object is located, with Z meaning Zenith or overhead.