Cat (constellation)
The cat ( lat. Felis ) is a constellation of the southern sky that is not one of the 88 constellations recognized by the International Astronomical Union .
The cat is part of the official constellation Water Snake . It is located southwest of the star μ Hydrae (42 Hya) and consists only of faint stars up to a maximum size of 5 m . To the south of the cat is the constellation Air Pump and west of it is the constellation Compass .
The constellation "Felis" was introduced by Jérôme Lalande in his map of the sky from 1799 and it can be found in Johann Elert Bode's famous catalog of stars . One motivation for this may have been to annoy the poet Voltaire , who did not like cats and often blasphemed that they had not made it into the 33 constellation animals. In any case, Lalande gave the reason: I like cats. Let this cat scratch the sky maps. The starry sky cost me enough worry, now I can have a joke with it too.
Even if the house cat is missing from the 88 recognized IAU constellations nowadays, three of the IAU constellations represent cats from a taxonomic point of view: Leo , Little Lion and Lynx .
