Bootes Constellation Facts

Bootes Star Map

Screen is too small to see picture, please view on a screen that is at least 380 pixels wide.

Bootes Facts

• Bootes is a Latin word; the English meaning/translation is the bear driver.
• Bootes's pronunciation is Boo-oh-teas.
• The genitive form is Bootis, which means any object with Bootis at the end of its name infers a relationship to the constellation. Typically, the thing is within the constellation's boundaries or was once until it (the borders) was redrawn.
• Bootes can be shortened or abbreviated to Boo. Bootes constellation was created by the ancient astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, who lived in 2nd century Alexandria, Egypt.
• Boötes (Constellation) takes up 906.831 sq. degrees of the night sky, equating to 2.2% of the night sky. Boötes is the 13th largest constellation in the night sky.
• Thirteen Extrasolar Planets in the Bootes constellation are detailed on this site. There is a dedicated page for exoplanets in Boötes.
• Charles Messier didn't catalogue any deep-space objects in the Bootes constellation.
• The following constellations border Bootes:-
  • Draco
  • Ursa Major
  • Canes Venatici
  • Coma Berenices
  • Virgo
  • Serpens
  • Corona Borealis
  • Hercules

Bootes Stars

Here are a few facts about the stars in the constellation.

• Bootes has eight stars that make up the constellation's shape.
• The Hipparcos satellite scanned and detailed two thousand four hundred and twenty-eight stars.
• You can see one hundred and fifty-nine stars within the Bootes constellation borders with the naked eye on a clear night sky.
• HIP 67593 is Bootes's nearest star, about 17.37 light-years from the Earth.
• The nearest star in Bootes to the Earth with an exoplanet is HD 128311, about 53.82 light-years away.
• Arcturus is Boötes's largest star in the constellation.

Arcturus

Boötes's brightest star is Arcturus, about 36.72 light-years from the Sun. The star is recognised as the brightest in the constellation as it has the Bayer status of Alpha. Arcturus has an apparent magnitude of -0.05 but an absolute magnitude of -0.31. The difference between the magnitudes is that absolute magnitude is the object from 10 Parsecs or 32.6 light-years away from the observer, whereas apparent is from Earth.

How to find Bootes Constellation

Northern Hemisphere

The constellation of Boötes can be seen most of the year. It appears in the East-North-East direction at the beginning of the year and moves across the sky in a southernly then westerly direction. It starts to disappear at the end of August and has gone by the middle of October. It returns towards the end of December, in time for the first major meteor shower of the year.

Southern Hemisphere

Boötes make a small appearance in the south, starting in late February and then rising very high before fully disappearing before August. If you were hoping to see the first meteor shower of the year, the Quantranids, then you will be disappointed in the southern hemisphere.

Bootes Mythology

It is unclear who Boötes is supposed to be. One legend has him as the man who, with his dogs Canes Venatici, chase the bears around the skies, keeping the Earth rotating. Boötes was also alleged to have created the Plough, which pleased the agriculture goddess. The goddess then asked for him to be turned into a constellation.

Another story has been associated with Icarius, who allowed Bacchus, the Roman God, to visit the farm and get too drunk. He became a constellation in revenge for being allowed to get too drunk. A third story has Boötes as Arcas, the son of Zeus and Callisto. Arcas was bought up by his mortal grandfather, who killed his grandson. Zeus brought Arcas back to life. Callisto was turned into a bear by an outraged Hera. When Arcas was grown up, he came across Callisto as a bear but didn't recognise her, so he chased her as they seemed to do so in the stars.

Quantranids Meteor Shower

Boötes has one of the most active meteor showers at the beginning of the solar year in January and is known as the Quadrantids Meteor Shower. Unlike other Meteor Showers, the name isn't obvious as to what constellation it belongs to. The difference in the name comes from the fact that the centre of activity used to be a now-ignored constellation called Quadrans Muralis to the north of Boötes.

The Quadrantids may be the most active, with 100 meteors an hour, but they are also the shortest. The shower period is a brief few hours in the morning. You need to be up really early if you wish to see them.

Furthest Quasar

Discoveries are always being made, and old records are being broken. The current furthest Quasar to be discovered as of Feb 2018 is ULAS J1342+0928. The quasar is 29.36 Billion light-years away from our solar system in the constellation of Boötes. The light we see from the quasar is from what it looked like when the Universe was a mere 690 million years old. The Universe is currently reckoned to be about 13.8 billion years old. The quasar has a mass that is 800 times the solar mass of our Sun. Arxiv

The Great Void

One of the most interesting parts of the Boötes constellation is that it contains a Supervoid, or the Great Void, to give it another name. The area is nearly 250 million light-years in diameter and approximately about 0.27% of the diameter of the visible Universe. ref:Wiki. As its name implies, it is void of all things in the Universe, and there's hardly anything there compared to similar-sized areas in the Universe. There is not much in the way of galaxies in this region. An area of that size should contain about 10,000 Galaxy, but so far, there have only been about 60 discovered. ref:IO9. It was first discovered by Robert Kirshner and his team in 1980 and has been observed ever since.