a tortoise, while another three formed Chǔ (杵), a pestle. The Wardaman people of the Northern Territory in Australia saw the stars of Ara and the neighbouring constellation Pavo as flying foxes. Characteristics Covering 237.1 square degrees and hence 0.575% of the sky, Ara ranks 63rd of the 88 modern constellations by area. Its position in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere means that the whole constellation is visible to observers south of 22°N. Scorpius runs along the length of its northern border, while Norma and Triangulum Australe border it to the west, Apus to the south, and Pavo and Telescopium to the east respectively. The three-letter abbreviation for the constellation, as adopted by the International Astronomical Union, is "Ara". The official constellation boundaries, as set by Belgian astronomer Eugène Delporte in 1930, are defined by a polygon of twelve segments. In the equatorial coordinate system, the right ascension coordinates of these borders lie between and , while the declination coordinates are between −45.49° and −67.69°. Features Stars Bayer gave eight stars Bayer designations, labelling them Alpha through to Theta, though he had never seen the constellation directly as it never rises above the horizon in Germany. After charting the southern constellations, French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille recharted the stars of Ara from Alpha though to Sigma, including three pairs of stars next to each other as Epsilon, Kappa and Nu. Ara contains part of the Milky Way to the south of Scorpius and thus has rich star fields. Within the constellation's borders, there are 71 stars brighter than or equal to apparent magnitude 6.5. Just shading Alpha Arae, Beta Arae is the brightest star in the constellation. It is an orange-hued star of spectral type K3Ib-IIa that has been classified as a supergiant or bright giant, that is around 650 light-years from Earth. It is around 8.21 times as massive and 5,636 times as luminous as the Sun. At apparent magnitude 2.85, this difference in brightness between the two is undetectable by the unaided eye. Close to Beta Arae is Gamma Arae, a blue-hued supergiant of spectral type B1Ib. Of apparent magnitude 3.3, it is 1110 ± 60 light-years from Earth. It has been estimated to be between 12.5 and 25 times as massive as the Sun, and have around 120,000 times its luminosity. Alpha Arae is a blue-white main sequence star of magnitude 2.95, that is 270 ± 20 light-years