Puppis

Puppis is a constellation in the southern sky. Its name is Latin for the poop deck of a ship, and it was originally part of a larger constellation, the ship Argo Navis, which was later divided into three parts, the others being Carina and Vela; Puppis is the largest of the three.

Planetary systems

Several extrasolar planet systems have been found around stars in the constellation Puppis.

On July 1, 2003, a planet was found orbiting the star HD 70642. This planetary system is much like Jupiter with a wide, circular orbit and a long-period.

On May 17, 2006, HD 69830 (the nearest star of this constellation) was discovered to have three Neptune-mass planets, the first multi-planetary system without any Jupiter-like or Saturn-like planets. The star also hosts an asteroid belt at the region between middle planet to outer planet.

On June 21, 2007, the first extrasolar planet found in the open cluster NGC 2423, was discovered around the red giant star NGC 2423-3. The planet is at least 10.6 times the mass of Jupiter and orbits at 2.1 AU distance.

On September 22, 2008, two Jupiter-like planets were discovered around HD 60532. HD 60532 b has a minimum mass of 1.03 MJ and orbits at 0.759 AU and takes 201.3 days to complete the orbit. HD 60532 c has a minimum mass of 2.46 MJ and orbits at 1.58 AU and takes 604 days to complete the orbit.

Deep sky objects

As the Milky Way runs through Puppis, there are a large number of open clusters in the constellation. Messier 46 (M46) and Messier 47 (M47) are two open clusters in the same binocular field. M47 can be seen with the naked eye under dark skies, and its brightest stars are 6th magnitude. Messier 93 (M93) is another open cluster somewhat to the south. NGC 2451 is a very bright open cluster containing the star c Puppis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puppis