Generalities: it is a southern constellation, interesting more for the contained objects that for its stars. The transit at midnight takes place in September.

Origins and mythology: this constellation belongs to the “modern” ones. It was defined by Bayer in the seventeenth century.

Stars: the Toucan has a star under  magnitude 3 and another one under magnitude 4. The brightest (alpha)  has orange color, magnitude 2.86 and it is 115 light-years far.

Table of stars brighter than magnitude 3.5
 

Star	Proper name	Magnitude	Spectrum	Coluor	Distance (light-years)	Notes
Alpha		2.86	K3	orange	114
Beta		3.7 (4.37+4.53)	B8+A2	white	108	Visual double star

Other objects: it contains the Little Cloud of Magellano, the small of the two satellite galaxies  of the Milky Way. This small galaxy contains 600 million stars, it is 10,000 light-years wide and is 200,000 light-years far. It belongs to the category of the dwarf galaxies, and it is visible with a  naked eye as nebulous light. The other great attraction of the Toucan is the  globular cluster  NGC 104, best known as 47 Tucanae, the second for richness and brightness, after omega Centauri.

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