Indus

Indus is named after the constellation, "Indus," meaning, "Indian." There are no myths associated with the constellation. The Indian is usually depicted holding arrows or spears as though hunting. The early depictions, including the one in Bayer’s Uranometria, indicate that Indus might represent a native of Madagascar as depicted in an account of Dutch navigators’ first voyage to the East Indies.

However, it is unclear whether the constellation really represents a native of the East Indies, or Madagascar, or South Africa, as the explorers encountered a number of indigenous peoples on their travels.

NGC 7090 is a spiral galaxy in Indus.



This image portrays a beautiful view of the galaxy NGC 7090, as seen by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The galaxy is viewed edge-on from the Earth, meaning we cannot easily see the spiral arms, which are full of young, hot stars. However, our side-on view shows the galaxy’s disc and the bulging central core, where typically a large group of cool old stars are packed in a compact, spheroidal region.