In 1603, star atlas author Johann Bayer literally enshrined Cristobal Colón’s navigation error in the stars. In Uranometria, he named a nearby constellation Indus after the people of the Americas. (The ubiquitous Amerigo Vespucci had a hand in star charts too.) It’s supposed to represent a drawing of an upside-down Native American chief. It’s a long way from the Sindhu River, which ironically now lies in Pakistan:

Just a century after Columbus’ discovery of America, Johann Bayer named this region of the southern sky after the native peoples of the New World. Perhaps the best known of Indus’ stars is Epsilon Indi, which lies just 12 light years from the Sun… [Link]

One of the stars in the constellation, Epsilon Indi, is a candidate for planetary exploration:

As it closely matches our own sun, Epsilon Indi has been studied as a possible candidate for planets… [Link]

Epsilon Indi has become one of the top 100 target stars for NASA’s planned Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF)… [Link]

Eurocentrism leaked into astronomers’ assessment of the constellation’s potential for armchair tourism

Frankly, Indus does not rank high on any sky tourist’s priority list, and contains only some not-very-bright galaxies, and double stars. [Link]

The stars are named in the Greek fashion: Alpha Indi, Beta Indi and so on. I thought we’d established that Indi are not alpha, they’re ‘ka.’ Ah well, we’ll always have the constellation Pavo (peacock). And Vedic astrology.

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