The constellation Sculptor contains the South Galactic Pole

The constellation Sculptor is a quiet patch of dark sky that brushes the southern horizon in November for Northern Hemisphere viewers. It is one of the 14 constellations named by the French astronomer Nicolas Lacaille (1713-1762). Lacaille’s original name for this grouping of southern stars was the Sculptor’s Workshop. But these dim stars resemble neither sculptor nor workshop. You might instead pick out a triangle of stars in Sculptor, shown in the chart at the top of this post. And in addition, this small constellation has a claim to fame. It’s home to the point in the sky astronomers recognize as the South Galactic Pole.

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What is the South Galactic Pole?

Imagine us on a galactic scale within the disk of our home Milky Way galaxy. The galaxy lies all around us in space. Indeed, it spins, just as Earth spins (and as all objects in space are spinning) around a central axis. The spin axis of the Milky Way runs through its center, making our great spiral galaxy resemble a turning pinwheel. So – in much the same way we on Earth look in our sky toward Polaris, our present-day North Star – so we on Earth can look in the sky toward the north and south poles of our Milky Way galaxy.

The North Galactic Pole lies in the northern constellation Coma Berenices. Likewise, the South Galactic Pole lies in the southern constellation Sculptor. The galactic latitude of that pole would be -90 degrees.

From our earthly vantage point, we can’t see into our galaxy’s center. That’s because nearly all the Milky Way’s visible contents – gas, dust, stars – lie in the flat plane of the galaxy, at zero degrees galactic longitude. To be sure, when we look toward the Milky Way’s center, there’s a lot of stuff obscuring our view between us and the center. But looking toward the poles of the galaxy is different, however. Then we’re looking up and away from the star-rich plane of the galaxy. IN this case, we’re looking more clearly into the space beyond our galaxy. And so astronomers say that looking toward Sculptor is like looking out our galaxy’s south window.

How to find Sculptor

People in the Southern Hemisphere can spy Sculptor overhead on November evenings. For Northern Hemisphere observers, you’ll have to have a clear horizon to the south and a dark-sky site. Notably, there is one bright star is in this region of sky, and it doesn’t belong to Sculptor. Fomalhaut, with the nickname of the loneliest star, is part of the constellation Piscis Austrinus the Southern Fish. Look east of Piscis Austrinus and below Cetus the Whale with its star Diphda. See that dark empty space? That’s Sculptor.

On the other hand, the constellation’s brightest star, Alpha Sculptoris, shines at a mere magnitude 4.3. This means that if you live in a city or nearby suburb, you can’t see any of Sculptor’s stars at all. Alpha Sculptoris lies about 780 light-years from Earth.

In addition, one other notable star in this constellation is Zeta Sculptoris, at magnitude 5.0. A smattering of dimmer stars surround Zeta, giving the cluster the name the Zeta Sculptoris Cluster. Yet Zeta is not actually part of the cluster. In fact, the cluster stars are much farther away.

Deep-sky objects in the constellation Sculptor

Also, a little less than five degrees from Alpha Sculptoris is the most notable deep-sky object in this constellation: the Sculptor Galaxy. At magnitude eight, you can spot the galaxy – also known as NGC 253 – through a small telescope. The galaxy is about 13 million light-years distant, making it a member of one of the nearest groups of galaxies to Earth. The galaxy is a spiral that shows a central bar in infrared images.

Also above Alpha Sculptoris, but below the galaxy, is the South Galactic Pole. If you want to gaze toward this point in the sky with your binoculars or telescope – look out our galaxy’s “south window,” as it were – its geocentric coordinates (right ascension and declination) are RA = 0h 51m 26.00s, Dec = -27d 7m 42.0s.

Deep field images of Pandora’s Cluster

Of course, one advantage of an area of sky that is sparsely populated with stars or other bright space objects is that it makes a great target for deep field photos from the Hubble and Webb telescopes. So they focused in on Sculptor to capture the massive galaxy cluster Abell 2744, also called Pandora’s Cluster. Indeed, even more distant galaxies appear through gravitational lensing in these photos.

Bottom line: The constellation Sculptor appears best on November evenings from the Northern Hemisphere, when it lies along the southern horizon.