Vela

constellation · southern sky · hot stars

Sails of a ship. Vela's name is Latin for 'sails,' and it was originally part of a much larger constellation called Argo Navis, which represented an entire ship in ancient sky maps. When astronomers reorganized the sky, they split the big ship into three separate constellations, with Vela keeping the sails part.

Super hot blue stars. Vela's brightest star is Gamma Velorum, a blue star so hot and energetic that it's actually made up of multiple stars orbiting each other. One of these stars is a Wolf-Rayet star, an extremely rare and hot type that shines brighter than most single stars combined.

The False Cross. Four bright stars in Vela and a nearby constellation form a pattern called the False Cross because it looks similar to the Southern Cross, another famous star pattern. Delta Velorum, one of these stars, isn't just one star but actually three to five stars locked together in an orbit.

Supercluster home. Deep within Vela lies the Vela Supercluster, an enormous group of galaxies stretching across a vast region of space, showing just how much cosmic structure exists beyond our own galaxy.