Generalities: it is an important rich southern constellation, which contains several bright stars. Among them the famous Alpha Centauri, which is the third star of the sky for brightness and above all the closest star to us. The Centaur  shows also important objects of the deep sky, among which the marvellous globular cluster "omega". The transit at midnight takes place between April and May.

Origins and mythology: it belongs to the original Ptolemaic constellations. It refers to the mythological figures of the centaurs, half men and half horses. According to some interpretations it represents the centaur Chiron.

Stars: the brightest star of the Centaur is Alpha Centauri, of magnitude -0.27. It is  a double star, made up of a yellow and an orange component, well separable, even with a little ambitious telescope. In this system there is also a red dwarf star, of low brightness, called Proxima Centauri. This small star is in reality the closest to us.  Alpha Centauri is  4.3 light-years far. Even the star Beta Centauri is very bright, shining of magnitude 0.61. This star, called Agena, is of blue color and is much farther than Alpha: in fact it is 500 light-years far.
Moreover in the Centaur there are other seven stars under magnitude 3 and other 10 under magnitude 4.

Table of stars brighter than magnitude 3.5
 

Star	Proper name	Magnitude	Spectrum	Color	Distance (light-years)	Notes
Alpha		-0.27	K1+G2	orange+yellow	4.2	Star closest to Sun. Visual double.3rd star in whole sky.
Beta	Agena	0.61	B1	blue	456
Theta		2.06	K0	orange	46
Gamma	Menkent	2.17	A0	white	111
Epsilon		2.30	B1	blue	490
Eta		2.31 (variabie)	B3	blue	360
Zeta		2.55	B2	blue	360
Delta		2.60 (variabie)	B2	blue	326
Iota		2.75	A2	white	52
Mu		3.04	B3	blue	290
Kappa		3.13 (variabie)	B2	blue	425
Lambda		3.13	B9	white	186
Nu		3.41	B5	white-blue	1010

Other objects: it includes the brightest and most spectacular globular cluster of the whole sky: Omega Centauri. It is a cluster already perceptible with the  naked  eye and it was already catalogued by Tolomeo. It is 17,000 light-years far and  contains about a million stars.

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