Telescopium is a minor constellation in the southern celestial hemisphere, one of twelve created in the 18th century by French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille and one of several depicting scientific instruments. Its name is a Latinized form of the Greek word for telescope. Telescopium was later much reduced in size by Francis Baily and Benjamin Gould. The brightest star in the constellation is Alpha Telescopii, a blue-white subgiant with an apparent magnitude of 3.5, followed by the orange giant star Zeta Telescopii at magnitude 4.1. Eta and PZ Telescopii are two young star systems with debris disks and brown dwarf companions. Telescopium hosts two unusual stars with very little hydrogen that are likely to be the result of merged white dwarfs: HD 168476, also known as PV Telescopii, is a hot blue extreme helium star, while RS Telescopii is an R Coronae Borealis variable. RR Telescopii is a cataclysmic variable that brightened to magnitude 6 in 1948 as a nova.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telescopium

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1618:

English courtier and explorer Walter Raleigh was executed in London after King James I reinstated a fifteen-year-old death sentence against him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Raleigh

1863:

American Civil War: The Battle of Wauhatchie, one of the few night battles of the war, concluded with the Union Army opening a supply line to troops in Chattanooga, Tennessee. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Wauhatchie

1917:

The Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, in charge of preparing for and carrying out the Russian Revolution, was established. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrograd_Military_Revolutionary_Committee

1969:

A student at UCLA sent the first message on the ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet, to a computer at Stanford Research Institute. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET

2013:

The first phase of the Marmaray project opened with an undersea rail tunnel across the Bosphorus strait. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmaray

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

coquette: A woman who flirts or plays with men's affections. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/coquette

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

Only the mediocre are always at their best.   --Jean Giraudoux https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean_Giraudoux