Camelopardalis

Camelopardalis, from Greek καμηλοπάρδαλις,(Greeks thought that it had the head of a camel and the spots of a leopard) is a large but faint constellation in the northern sky. Its name is Latin for giraffe. The constellation was first described by Jakob Bartsch in 1624, but was probably created earlier by Petrus Plancius. In older astronomy books, one will sometimes see an alternative spelling of the name as Camelopardus.

History
The faintness of the constellation, and that of the nearby constellation Lynx, lead to the early Greeks considering this area of the sky to be empty. Camelopardalis was not defined as a constellation until the seventeenth century and thus has no mythology associated with its stars.









NGC 2363 in Camelopardalis