Vespa (constellation)

Vespa (Latin for wasp) was the name used by Jakob Bartsch in 1624 for a constellation, now obsolete, that was originally called Apes (possibly a misspelling of Apis, Latin for bee) by Petrus Plancius when he created it in 1612. It was made up of a small group of stars, located between the constellations of Aries and Perseus. The renaming by Bartsch may have been intended to avoid confusion with another constellation, created by Plancius in 1598, that was called Apis by Bayer in 1603. Plancius called this earlier constellation Muia (Greek for fly) in 1612, and it had been called Musca (Latin for fly) by Blaeu in 1602, although Bayer was evidently unaware of this. The later constellation was also called Musca Borealis in some later sources.

See also: Apis, Musca.

External links

• http://www.pa.msu.edu/people/horvatin/Astronomy_Facts/obsolete_pages/vespa.htm
• http://www.ianridpath.com/startales/muscaborealis.htm

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