Apus constellation

Apus, the Bird of Paradise, goes back to the Dutch navigators Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman, who observed the southern sky on their voyage to the East Indies at the end of the 16th century. The cartographer Petrus Plancius placed their stars on a celestial globe, and Johann Bayer popularised the figure in his 1603 atlas Uranometria. It recalls the brilliantly coloured birds of paradise of New Guinea; the skins that reached Europe had no feet, which led people to believe the birds never landed. The constellation is small and faint, with its brightest stars only around fourth magnitude. Lying close to the south celestial pole, Apus never rises above the horizon from Central Europe, while from the southern hemisphere it can be seen all year round.