Columba

the Dove

Brightest star: Phact
Best seen: December to February, in the evening
Where: Best from the Southern Hemisphere; from the north it stays low.
Abbreviation: Col

How to find Columba

Below Lepus and to the south-west of Sirius, a short curved line of stars makes the dove.

The story

Columba was named in the late 16th century. It is usually said to be the dove that Noah sent out from the ark, which came back with an olive branch.

Worth knowing

Columba is one of the constellations added in the age of sea voyages, when European sailors charted the southern sky.

Columba in three cultures

Dutch
The Dutch mapmaker Petrus Plancius first drew the dove in 1592, in the margin of a large world map, as Columba Noachi, "Noah's Dove".
Arabic
The brightest star, Phact, takes its name from the Arabic for "ring dove".
Chinese
Chinese astronomers saw a family of three generations here.

Around the world

Dutch (European mapmakers)

The Dutch mapmaker Petrus Plancius first drew the dove in 1592, in the margin of a large world map, as Columba Noachi, "Noah's Dove". He took ten loose stars that Ptolemy had listed outside the Great Dog. A few of the stars between the dog's hind legs were imagined as the olive branch in its beak. In 1603 the navigator Frederick de Houtman listed it in Dutch as "the dove with the olive branch". To complete the Bible scene, Plancius later renamed the nearby ship Argo as Noah's Ark on a globe of 1613.

Greek (a later reading)

The dove flies just behind the ship Argo. Star historian Ian Ridpath notes that people who know the Argonaut story might see it as the dove the Argonauts sent between the Clashing Rocks to make sure they could pass. This is a modern reading, not an ancient constellation.

Arabic

The brightest star, Phact, takes its name from the Arabic for "ring dove". The name was first used for stars in Cygnus and only later moved to this star.

Chinese

Chinese astronomers saw a family of three generations here. Alpha and Epsilon Columbae were Zhangren, an old farmer or grandfather. Another pair was his son and a third pair his grandson. One star in the north was droppings from the celestial toilet in neighbouring Lepus, part of a hunting scene in this region.

Folk beliefs and customs

A dove with an olive branch. In Bayer's atlas of 1603 and Bode's of 1801 the dove carries an olive branch in its beak, the sign that Noah's flood was going down.
The "ancient dove" that never was. In 1662 a writer mistranslated an early Christian text that suggested a dove as a seal design. The mistake made it look as if the dove had been a star figure in Greek and Roman times. The American writer R. H. Allen repeated the idea in 1889, though he added a note of doubt. Columba is in fact from 1592.
Named on a voyage. Edmond Halley recorded Columba while charting the southern stars on St Helena, published in 1679.

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