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This webpage reproduces a section of
Star Names
Their Lore and Meaning
by
Richard Hinckley Allen
as reprinted
in the Dover edition, 1963

The text is in the public domain.

This page has been carefully proofread
and I believe it to be free of errors.
If you find a mistake though,
please let me know!

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 p250  Indus, the Indian,

is the German Indianer, the Italian Indiano, and the French Indien; La Lande giving the alternative Triangle Indien, probably from the general outline of its chief stars.

It is one of Bayer's new constellations, south of the Microscope, between Grus and Pavo, and, although generally supposed to represent a typical American Indian, its publisher drew it as a far more civilized character, yet nude, with arrows in both hands, but no bow. Flamsteed's Atlas has a similar figuring. Julius Schiller, however, went much further back in point of time and joined it with Pavo as the patriarch Job.

Indus, or its lucida α, was Pe Sze in China, where it also was known as the Persian, a title from the Jesuit missionaries.

Gould assigned to it 84 naked-eye stars, from 3.1 to 7th magnitudes; but none of these are specially noticeable except the 6.3 γ, which may be a variable, and ε, with the unusually large proper motion of 4″.6 annually, a rate of speed that will carry it to the south pole in 50,000 years.

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Page updated: 10 Oct 07

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