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Andromeda (mythology)
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Idealized beauty to realism
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Idealized beauty to realism
Andromeda, and her role in the popular myth of Perseus, has been the subject of numerous ancient and modern works of art, where she is represented as a bound and helpless, typically beautiful, young woman placed in terrible danger, who must be saved through the unswerving courage of a hero who loves her. She is often shown, as by Rubens, with Perseus and the flying horse Pegasus at the moment she is freed. Rembrandt, in contrast, shows a suffering Andromeda, frightened and alone. She is depicted naturalistically, exemplifying the painter's rejection of idealized beauty. Frederic, Lord Leighton's Gothic style 1891 Perseus and Andromeda painting presents the white body of Andromeda in pure and untouched innocence, indicating an unfair sacrifice for a divine punishment that was not directed towards her, but to her mother. Pegasus and Perseus are surrounded by a halo of light that connects them visually to the white body of the princess.
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Andromeda (mythology)
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Varied materials and approaches
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Varied materials and approaches
Apart from oil on canvas, artists have used a variety of materials to depict the myth of Andromeda, including the sculptor Domenico Guidi's marble, and François Boucher's etching. In modern art of the 20th century, artists moved to depict the myth in new ways. Félix Vallotton's 1910 Perseus Killing the Dragon is one of several paintings, such as his 1908 The Rape of Europa, in which the artist depicts human bodies using a harsh light which makes them appear brutal.
Alexander Liberman's 1962 Andromeda is a black circle on a white field, transected by purple and dark green crescent arcs.
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Andromeda (mythology)
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Analysis
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Analysis
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Andromeda (mythology)
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Ethnicity
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Ethnicity
thumb|upright=1.75|According to Herodotus in the 5th century BC, the Aethiopians were a dark-skinned people occupying the whole of the southernmost fringes of the inhabitable world, to the south of Libya.For all references to Aethiopia in Herodotus, see: this list at the Perseus Project.
Andromeda was the daughter of the king and queen of Aethiopia, which ancient Greeks located at the edge of the world in Nubia, the lands south of Egypt. The term Aithiops was applied to peoples who dwelt above the equator, between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Homer says the Ethiopians live "at the world's end, and lie in two halves, the one looking West and the other East".Homer, Odyssey 1.22–24; Homer established a long-standing literary tradition that Ethiopia was an idyllic land of plenty where the gods attended feasts. The 5th-century BC historian Herodotus writes that "Where south inclines westwards, the part of the world stretching farthest towards the sunset is Ethiopia", and also included a plan by Cambyses II of Persia to invade Ethiopia (Kush).Herodotus, Histories 3.114, 3.94, 7.70.
By the 1st century BC a rival location for Andromeda's story had become established: an outcrop of rocks near the ancient port city of Joppa, as reported by Pomponius Mela,Pomponius Mela, 1.64. the traveller Pausanias,Pausanias, 4.35.9. the geographer Strabo,Strabo, 1.2.35, 16.2.28. and the historian Josephus.Josephus, Jewish War 3.9.3. A case has been made that this new version of the myth was exploited to enhance the fame and serve the local tourist trade of Joppa, which also became connected with the biblical story of Jonah and yet another huge sea creature.Harvey, Paul Jr., "The death of mythology: the case of Joppa", Journal of Early Christian Studies, January 1994, Vol. 2 Issue: Number 1 p. 1-14 This was at odds with Andromeda's African origins, adding to the confusion already surrounding her ethnicity, as reflected in 5th-century BC Greek vase images showing Andromeda attended by dark-skinned African servants and wearing clothing that would have looked foreign to Greeks, yet with light skin. At least one of the vases depicts Andromeda and her father as mixed race barbarians who possess some features similar to their dark-skinned African servants.
The art historian Elizabeth McGrath discusses the tradition, as promoted by the influential Roman poet Ovid, that Andromeda was a dark-skinned woman of either Ethiopian or Indian origin. In the Greek Anthology, Philodemus (1st century BC) wrote about the "Indian Andromeda".Greek Anthology, 5.132 (English translation; Greek text). In his Heroides, Ovid has Sappho explain to Phaon: "If I'm not pale, Andromeda pleased Perseus, dark with the colour of her father Cepheus's land. And often white pigeons mate with other hues, and the dark turtledove's loved by emerald birds";Ovid, Heroides, 15.35–38. the Latin word Ovid uses here for 'dark Andromeda' refers to the colour black or brown. Elsewhere he says that Perseus brought Andromeda from "darkest" IndiaOvid, Ars Amatoria 1.53. and declares "Nor was Andromeda's colour any problem to her wing-footed aerial lover"Ovid, Ars Amatoria 2.643–644. adding that "White suits dark girls; you looked so attractive in white, Andromeda".Ovid, Ars Amatoria 3.191–192. Ovid's account of Andromeda's storyOvid, Metamorphoses 4.665 ff. follows Euripides' play Andromeda in having Perseus initially mistake the chained Andromeda for a statue of marble, which has been taken to mean she was light-skinned; but since statues in Ovid's time were commonly painted to look like living people, her skin could have been of any colour. The ambiguity is reflected in a description by the 2nd-century AD sophist Philostratus of a painting depicting Perseus and Andromeda. He emphasizes the painting's Ethiopian setting, and notes that Andromeda "is charming in that she is fair of skin though in Ethiopia," in clear contrast to the other "charming Ethiopians with their strange coloring and their grim smiles" who have assembled to cheer Perseus in this picture.Philostratus, Imagines 1.29. Heliodorus of Emesa follows Philostratus in describing Andromeda as light-skinned in contrast to the clearly dark-skinned Aethiopians; in his Aethiopica, Queen Persinna of Aethiopia gives birth to an inexplicably white girl, Chariclea. Heliodorus states that this happened because the queen had gazed at a picture of Andromeda in the palace. The scholar of literature John Michael Archer calls this an example of "how African space is defined by European reference points".
Artworks in the modern era continue to portray Andromeda as fair-skinned, regardless of her stated origins; only a small minority of artists, such as an engraving after Abraham van Diepenbeeck, have chosen to show her as dark. The journalist Patricia Yaker Ekall comments that even this work depicts Andromeda with "European features". She suggests that the "narrative" of white superiority took precedence, and that "the visual of a white man rescuing a chained up black woman would have been too much of a trigger".
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Andromeda (mythology)
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Bondage and rescue
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Bondage and rescue
thumb|upright|The Andromeda story has been compared to the erotically charged painting, John Everett Millais's The Knight Errant (1870), which embodies similar psychological motifs.
The imagery of Perseus and Andromeda was depicted by many artists of the Victorian era, including Edward Burne-Jones and Frederic Leighton. Adrienne Munich states that most of these choose the moment after the hero Perseus has killed Medusa and is preparing to "slay the dragon and unbind the maiden". In her view, this transitional moment just precedes "the hero's final test of manhood before entering adult sexuality". Andromeda, on the other hand, "has no story, but she has a role and a lineage", being a princess, and having "attributes: chains, nakedness, flowing hair, beauty, virginity. Without a voice in her fate, she neither defies the gods nor chooses her mate." Munich comments that given that most of the artists were men, "it can be thought of as a male myth", providing convenient gender roles. She cites Catherine MacKinnon's description of the gender differences as "the erotization of dominance and submission": the male gets the power and the female is submissive. Further, the rescue myth provides a "veneer of charity" over the themes of aggression and possession.
Munich likens the effect to John Everett Millais's 1870 painting The Knight Errant, where the knight, "errant like Oedipus", finds a man sexually assaulting a bound and naked woman, which she calls a Freudian "primal scene". The knight kills the man and frees the woman. She asks whether Millais's knight is hiding from the woman's body, or demonstrating self-control, or whether he has "killed his own more aggressive self". She states that similar psychological themes are implied by the story of Perseus and Andromeda: Perseus makes Andromeda into a mother, thus Oedipally "conflating the purpose of his quest with the goal of finding a wife."
As for the bondage, Munich notes that the Victorian critic John Ruskin attacked male exploitation of what she calls "suffering nudes as subjects for titillating pictures." "Andromeda" is, she writes, the name of a type of "debased" imagery. She gives as example Gustave Doré's drawing of the voluptuously chained-up Angelica for , where "torment combines with an artistic pose, giving a new meaning to the concept of the 'pin-up'." She notes Ruskin's assertion that the image linked nude prostitutes to the naked Christ, both perverting the meaning of Andromeda's suffering and "blasphem[ing] Christ's sacrifice".
Further, Munich writes, Andromeda's name means 'Ruler of Men', hinting at her power; and indeed, she can be seen as "the good sister" of the monstrous female, the Medusa who turns men to stone. In psychological terms, she comments, "by slaying the Medusa and freeing Andromeda, the hero tames the chaotic female, the very sign of nature, simultaneously choosing and constructing the socially defined and acceptable female behavior."
thumb|upright=2.5|center|Adrienne Munich's analysis of the Andromeda myth
thumb|The story of Cadmus, Harmonia, and the dragon is one of several myths similar to that of Perseus and Andromeda. Black-figured amphora from Euboea, 560–550 BC
In the view of Marilynn Desmond and Pamela Sheingorn, Christine de Pizan's Ovide moralisé presents the bound Andromeda in a miniature image as "the object of desire". The image of "her white body silhouetted against the dark rock and the ropes visibly outlined against her flesh, Andromeda's bondage encodes her exposed vulnerability." They note that the "sexually charged" image contradicts the text, drawing the reader's eye to the sexual threat of the devouring monster. In support of this, they quote Marina Warner's observation that "in myth and fairy tale, the metaphor of devouring often stands in for sex."
The scholar of literature Harold Knutson describes the story as having a "disturbing sensuality", which together with the evident injustice of Andromeda's "undeserved sacrifice, create a curiously ambiguous effect". He suggests that in the earlier Palestinian version, the woman was the object of desire, Aphrodite/Ishtar/Astarte, and the hero was the sun god Marduk. The monster was woman in evil form, so chaining her human form would keep her from further evil. Knutson comments that the myth illustrates "the ambiguous male view of the eternal female principle."
Knutson writes that a similar pattern is seen in several other myths, including Heracles' rescue of Hesione; Jason's rescue of Medea from the hundred-eyed dragon; Cadmus's rescue of Harmonia from a dragon; and in an early version of another tale, Theseus's rescue of Ariadne from the Minotaur. He comments that all of this points to "the richness of the [story's] archetypal model", citing Hudo Hetzner's analysis of the many stories that involve a hero rescuing a maiden from a monster. The beast may be a sea-monster, or it may be a dragon that lives in a cave and terrifies a whole country, or the monstrous Count Dracula who lives in a castle.
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Andromeda (mythology)
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See also
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See also
Hesione – saved by Heracles from a sea monster
Cleostratus – saved by Menestratus from a dragon
Alcyoneus – saved by Eurybarus from a cave-dwelling monster
Iphigenia – sacrificed to the goddess Artemis (or rescued, depending on the version)
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Andromeda (mythology)
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References
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References
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Andromeda (mythology)
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Sources
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Sources
Apollodorus, Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, 1921. . Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Hard, Robin (2004), The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H.J. Rose's "Handbook of Greek Mythology", Psychology Press, 2004. . Google Books.
Hard, Robin (2015), Eratosthenes and Hyginus: Constellation Myths, With Aratus's Phaenomena, Oxford University Press, 2015. . Google Books.
Herodotus, Histories, translated by A. D. Godley, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1920. . Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Hesiod, Catalogue of Women, in Hesiod: The Shield, Catalogue of Women, Other Fragments, edited and translated by Glenn W. Most, Loeb Classical Library No. 503, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2007, 2018. . Online version.
Hyginus, Gaius Julius, De astronomia, in The Myths of Hyginus, edited and translated by Mary A. Grant, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1960. Online version at ToposText.
Hyginus, Gaius Julius, Fabulae, in The Myths of Hyginus, edited and translated by Mary A. Grant, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1960. Online version at ToposText.
Lucian, Phalaris. Hippias or The Bath. Dionysus. Heracles. Amber or The Swans. The Fly. Nigrinus. Demonax. The Hall. My Native Land. Octogenarians. A True Story. Slander. The Consonants at Law. The Carousal (Symposium) or The Lapiths, translated by A. M. Harmon, Loeb Classical Library No. 14, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1913. . Online version at Harvard University Press.
Manilius, Astronomica, edited and translated by G. P. Goold, Loeb Classical Library No. 469, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1977. . Online version at Harvard University Press.
Ovid, Metamorphoses, edited and translated by Brookes More, Boston, Cornhill Publishing Co., 1922. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Online version at ToposText.
Pausanias, Pausanias Description of Greece with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd., 1918. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Smith, William, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London (1873). Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Strabo, Geography, edited and translated by H.C. Hamilton, Esq., W. Falconer, M.A., London, George Bell & Sons, 1903. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Trzaskoma, Stephen M., R. Scott Smith, and Stephen Brunet, Anthology of Classical Myth: Primary Sources in Translation, Hackett Publishing Company, 2004. . Google Books.
Tzetzes, John, Scolia eis Lycophroon, edited by Christian Gottfried Müller, Sumtibus F.C.G. Vogelii, 1811. Internet Archive.
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Andromeda (mythology)
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Further reading
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Further reading
Edwin Hartland, The Legend of Perseus: A Study of Tradition in Story, Custom and Belief, 3 vols. (1894–1896) (available online at: https://archive.org/details/legendofperseuss01hart/page/n6/mode/2up)
Daniel Ogden, Perseus (Routledge, 2008)
Category:Metamorphoses characters
Category:Princesses in Greek mythology
Category:Queens in Greek mythology
Category:Deeds of Poseidon
Category:Love stories
Category:Nude sculptures of women
category:Nude paintings of women
Category:Iconography
Category:Ethiopian characters in Greek mythology
Category:Race-related controversies in art
Category:Damsels in distress
Category:Perseus
Category:Human sacrifice in folklore and mythology
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Andromeda (mythology)
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Table of Content
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Short description, Etymology, Classical mythology, Central story, In classical art, Variants, Constellations, In literature, In poetry, In novels, In the performing arts, In theatre, In music and opera, In film, In art, Merged traditions, Idealized beauty to realism, Varied materials and approaches, Analysis, Ethnicity, Bondage and rescue, See also, References, Sources, Further reading
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Antlia
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Short description
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Antlia (; from Ancient Greek ἀντλία) is a constellation in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere. Its name means "pump" in Latin and Greek; it represents an air pump. Originally Antlia Pneumatica, the constellation was established by Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille in the 18th century. Its non-specific (single-word) name, already in limited use, was preferred by John Herschel then welcomed by the astronomic community which officially accepted this. North of stars forming some of the sails of the ship Argo Navis (the constellation Vela), Antlia is completely visible from latitudes south of 49 degrees north.
Antlia is a faint constellation; its brightest star is Alpha Antliae, an orange giant that is a suspected variable star, ranging between apparent magnitudes 4.22 and 4.29. S Antliae is an eclipsing binary star system, changing in brightness as one star passes in front of the other. Sharing a common envelope, the stars are so close they will one day merge to form a single star. Two star systems with known exoplanets, HD 93083 and WASP-66, lie within Antlia, as do NGC 2997, a spiral galaxy, and the Antlia Dwarf Galaxy.
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Antlia
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History
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History
thumb|upright=1.38|left|Johann Bode's depiction of Antlia as a double-cylinder air pump
The French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille first described the constellation in French as la Machine Pneumatique (the Pneumatic Machine) in 1751–52, commemorating the air pump invented by the French physicist Denis Papin. De Lacaille had observed and catalogued almost 10,000 southern stars during a two-year stay at the Cape of Good Hope, devising fourteen new constellations in uncharted regions of the Southern Celestial Hemisphere not visible from Europe. He named all but one in honour of instruments that symbolised the Age of Enlightenment. Lacaille depicted Antlia as a single-cylinder vacuum pump used in Papin's initial experiments, while German astronomer Johann Bode chose the more advanced double-cylinder version. Lacaille Latinised the name to Antlia pneumatica on his 1763 chart. English astronomer John Herschel proposed shrinking the name to one word in 1844, noting that Lacaille himself had abbreviated his constellations thus on occasion. This was universally adopted. The International Astronomical Union adopted it as one of the 88 modern constellations in 1922.
Although visible to the Ancient Greeks, Antlia's stars were too faint to have been commonly recognised as a figurative object, or part of one, in ancient asterisms. The stars that now comprise Antlia are in a zone of the sky associated with the asterism/old constellation Argo Navis, the ship, the Argo, of the Argonauts, in its latter centuries. This, due to its immense size, was split into hull, poop deck and sails by Lacaille in 1763. Ridpath reports that due to their faintness, the stars of Antlia did not make up part of the classical depiction of Argo Navis.
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Antlia
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In non-Western astronomy
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In non-Western astronomy
Chinese astronomers were able to view what is modern Antlia from their latitudes, and incorporated its stars into two different constellations. Several stars in the southern part of Antlia were a portion of "Dong'ou", which represented an area in southern China. Furthermore, Epsilon, Eta, and Theta Antliae were incorporated into the celestial temple, which also contained stars from modern Pyxis.
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Antlia
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Characteristics
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Characteristics
Covering 238.9 square degrees and hence 0.579% of the sky, Antlia ranks 62nd 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 49°N. Hydra the sea snake runs along the length of its northern border, while Pyxis the compass, Vela the sails, and Centaurus the centaur line it to the west, south and east respectively. The three-letter abbreviation for the constellation, as adopted by the International Astronomical Union, is "Ant". The official constellation boundaries, as set by Belgian astronomer Eugène Delporte in 1930, are defined by a polygon with an east side, south side and ten other sides (facing the two other cardinal compass points) (illustrated in infobox at top-right). In the equatorial coordinate system, the right ascension coordinates of these borders lie between and , while the declination coordinates are between −24.54° and −40.42°.
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Antlia
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Features
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Features
thumb|right|upright=1.38|The constellation Antlia as seen by the naked eye
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Antlia
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Stars
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Stars
Lacaille gave nine stars Bayer designations, labelling them Alpha through to Theta, combining two stars next to each other as Zeta. Gould later added a tenth, Iota Antliae. Beta and Gamma Antliae (now HR 4339 and HD 90156) ended up in the neighbouring constellation Hydra once the constellation boundaries were delineated in 1930. Within the constellation's borders, there are 42 stars brighter than or equal to apparent magnitude 6.5.
The constellation's two brightest stars—Alpha and Epsilon Antliae—shine with a reddish tinge. Alpha is an orange giant of spectral type K4III that is a suspected variable star, ranging between apparent magnitudes 4.22 and 4.29. It is located 320 ± 10 light-years away from Earth. Estimated to be shining with around 480 to 555 times the luminosity of the Sun, it is most likely an ageing star that is brightening and on its way to becoming a Mira variable star, having converted all its core fuel into carbon. Located 590 ± 30 light-years from Earth, Epsilon Antliae is an evolved orange giant star of spectral type K3 IIIa, that has swollen to have a diameter about 69 times that of the Sun, and a luminosity of around 1279 Suns. It is slightly variable. At the other end of Antlia, Iota Antliae is likewise an orange giant of spectral type K1 III. It is 202 ± 2 light-years distant.
Located near Alpha is Delta Antliae, a binary star, 450 ± 10 light-years distant from Earth. The primary is a blue-white main sequence star of spectral type B9.5V and magnitude 5.6, and the secondary is a yellow-white main sequence star of spectral type F9Ve and magnitude 9.6. Zeta Antliae is a wide optical double star. The brighter star—Zeta1 Antliae—is 410 ± 40 light-years distant and has a magnitude of 5.74, though it is a true binary star system composed of two white main sequence stars of magnitudes 6.20 and 7.01 that are separated by 8.042 arcseconds. The fainter star—Zeta2 Antliae—is 386 ± 5 light-years distant and of magnitude 5.9. Eta Antliae is another double composed of a yellow white star of spectral type F1V and magnitude 5.31, with a companion of magnitude 11.3. Theta Antliae is likewise double, most likely composed of an A-type main sequence star and a yellow giant. S Antliae is an eclipsing binary star system that varies in apparent magnitude from 6.27 to 6.83 over a period of 15.6 hours. The system is classed as a W Ursae Majoris variable—the primary is hotter than the secondary and the drop in magnitude is caused by the latter passing in front of the former. Calculating the properties of the component stars from the orbital period indicates that the primary star has a mass 1.94 times and a diameter 2.026 times that of the Sun, and the secondary has a mass 0.76 times and a diameter 1.322 times that of the Sun. The two stars have similar luminosity and spectral type as they have a common envelope and share stellar material. The system is thought to be around 5–6 billion years old. The two stars will eventually merge to form a single fast-spinning star.
T Antliae is a yellow-white supergiant of spectral type F6Iab and Classical Cepheid variable ranging between magnitude 8.88 and 9.82 over 5.9 days. U Antliae is a red C-type carbon star and is an irregular variable that ranges between magnitudes 5.27 and 6.04. At 910 ± 50 light-years distant, it is around 5819 times as luminous as the Sun. BF Antliae is a Delta Scuti variable that varies by 0.01 of a magnitude. HR 4049, also known as AG Antliae, is an unusual hot variable ageing star of spectral type B9.5Ib-II. It is undergoing intense loss of mass and is a unique variable that does not belong to any class of known variable star, ranging between magnitudes 5.29 and 5.83 with a period of 429 days. It is around 6000 light-years away from Earth. UX Antliae is an R Coronae Borealis variable with a baseline apparent magnitude of around 11.85, with irregular dimmings down to below magnitude 18.0. A luminous and remote star, it is a supergiant with a spectrum resembling that of a yellow-white F-type star but it has almost no hydrogen.
thumb|right|upright=1.38|A composite image of NGC 2997
HD 93083 is an orange dwarf star of spectral type K3V that is smaller and cooler than the Sun. It has a planet that was discovered by the radial velocity method with the HARPS spectrograph in 2005. About as massive as Saturn, the planet orbits its star with a period of 143 days at a mean distance of 0.477 AU. WASP-66 is a sunlike star of spectral type F4V. A planet with 2.3 times the mass of Jupiter orbits it every 4 days, discovered by the transit method in 2012. DEN 1048-3956 is a brown dwarf of spectral type M8 located around 13 light-years distant from Earth. At magnitude 17 it is much too faint to be seen with the unaided eye. It has a surface temperature of about 2500 K. Two powerful flares lasting 4–5 minutes each were detected in 2002. 2MASS 0939-2448 is a system of two cool and faint brown dwarfs, probably with effective temperatures of about 500 and 700 K and masses of about 25 and 40 times that of Jupiter, though it is also possible that both objects have temperatures of 600 K and 30 Jupiter masses.
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Antlia
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Deep-sky objects
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Deep-sky objects
thumb|left|Galaxy ESO 376-16 is located nearly 23 million light-years from Earth.
Antlia contains many faint galaxies, the brightest of which is NGC 2997 at magnitude 10.6. It is a loosely wound face-on spiral galaxy of type Sc. Though nondescript in most amateur telescopes, it presents bright clusters of young stars and many dark dust lanes in photographs. Discovered in 1997, the Antlia Dwarf is a 14.8m dwarf spheroidal galaxy that belongs to the Local Group of galaxies. In 2018 the discovery was announced of a very low surface brightness galaxy near Epsilon Antliae, Antlia 2, which is a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.
The Antlia Cluster, also known as Abell S0636, is a cluster of galaxies located in the Hydra–Centaurus Supercluster. It is the third nearest to the Local Group after the Virgo Cluster and the Fornax Cluster. The cluster's distance from earth is Located in the southeastern corner of the constellation, it boasts the giant elliptical galaxies NGC 3268 and NGC 3258 as the main members of a southern and northern subgroup respectively, and contains around 234 galaxies in total.
Antlia is home to the huge Antlia Supernova Remnant, one of the largest supernova remnants in the sky.
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Antlia
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Notes
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Notes
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Antlia
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References
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References
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Antlia
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Citations
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Citations
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Antlia
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Sources
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Sources
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Antlia
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External links
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External links
The Deep Photographic Guide to the Constellations: Antlia
The clickable Antlia
Category:Southern constellations
Category:Constellations listed by Lacaille
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Antlia
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Table of Content
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Short description, History, In non-Western astronomy, Characteristics, Features, Stars, Deep-sky objects, Notes, References, Citations, Sources, External links
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Ara (constellation)
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Short description
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Ara (Latin for "the Altar") is a southern constellation between Scorpius, Telescopium, Triangulum Australe, and Norma. It was (as ) one of the Greek bulk (namely 48) described by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations designated by the International Astronomical Union.
The orange supergiant Beta Arae, to us its brightest star measured with near-constant apparent magnitude of 2.85, is marginally brighter than blue-white Alpha Arae. Seven star systems are known to host planets. Sunlike Mu Arae hosts four known planets. Gliese 676 is a (gravity-paired) binary red dwarf system with four known planets.
The Milky Way crosses the northwestern part of Ara. Within the constellation is Westerlund 1, a super star cluster that contains the red supergiant Westerlund 1-26, one of the largest stars known.
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Ara (constellation)
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History
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History
In ancient Greek mythology, Ara was identified as the altar where the gods first made offerings and formed an alliance before defeating the Titans. One of the southernmost constellations depicted by Ptolemy, it had been recorded by Aratus in 270 BC as lying close to the horizon, and the Almagest portrays stars as far south as Gamma Arae. Professor Bradley Schaefer proposes such Ancients must have been able to see as far south as Zeta Arae, for a pattern that looked like an altar.
thumb|left|Johann Elert Bode's illustration of Ara, from his Uranographia (1801)
In illustrations, Ara is usually depicted as compact classical altar with its smoke 'rising' southward. However, depictions often vary. In the early days of printing, a 1482 woodcut of Gaius Julius Hyginus's classic Poeticon Astronomicon depicts the altar as surrounded by demons. Johann Bayer in 1603 depicted Ara as an altar with burning incense. Indeed, frankincense burners were common throughout the Levant especially in the Yemen, where they are known as Mabkhara. This required live coals or burning embers called Jamra', in order to burn the incense. Willem Blaeu, a Dutch uranographer of the 16th and 17th centuries, drew Ara as an altar for sacrifices, with a burning animal offering unusually whose smoke rises northward, represented by Alpha Arae.
The Castle of Knowledge by Robert Record of 1556 lists the constellation stating that "Under the Scorpions tayle, standeth the Altar.";The Castle of Knowledge containing the Explication of the Sphere both Celestiall and Materiall, etc., 1st edition, 1556; Robert Record, London; R. Wolfe (printer) STC 20796 a decade later a translation of a fairly recent mainly astrological work by Marcellus Palingenius of 1565, by Barnabe Googe states "Here mayst thou both the Altar, and the myghty Cup beholde."The zodiake of life written by the godly and zealous poet Marcellus Palingenius Stellatus, wherein are conteyned twelve bookes, new edition, 1565 (1 vol.); Barnabe Googe, London; Henry Denham (printer), for Rafe Newberye dwelling in Fleete streate, Anno. 1565. Aprilis. 18; STC 1915
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Ara (constellation)
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Equivalents
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Equivalents
In Chinese astronomy, the stars of the constellation Ara lie within The Azure Dragon of the East (, ). Five stars of Ara formed (), a tortoise, while another three formed (), a pestle.
The Wardaman people of the Northern Territory in Australia saw the stars of Ara and the neighbouring constellation Pavo as flying foxes.
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Ara (constellation)
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Characteristics
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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°.
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Ara (constellation)
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Features
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Features
thumb|left|200px|The constellation Ara as it can be seen by the naked eye.
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Ara (constellation)
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Stars
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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 through 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.
Beta Arae, apparent magnitude 2.85, is the brightest star in the constellation, about 0.1 mag brighter than Alpha Arae although the difference in brightness between the two is undetectable by the unaided eye. Beta is an orange-hued star of spectral type K3Ib-IIa that has been classified as a supergiant or bright giant, and lies around 650 light-years from Earth. It is over 8 times as massive and 5,636 times as luminous as the Sun. 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 from Earth. This star is around 9.6 times as massive as the Sun, and has an average of 4.5 times its radius. It is 5,800 times as luminous as the Sun,. See Tables 1 and 4 for parameters of the star, circumstellar disk, and polar winds. its energy emitted from its outer envelope at an effective temperature of 18,044 K. A Be star, Alpha Arae is surrounded by a dense equatorial disk of material in Keplerian (rather than uniform) rotation. The star is losing mass by a polar stellar wind with a terminal velocity of approximately 1,000 km/s.
The third brightest star in Ara at magnitude 3.13 is Zeta Arae, an orange giant of spectral type K3III that is located 490 ± 10 light-years from Earth. Around 7–8 times as massive as the Sun, it has swollen to a diameter around 114 times that of the Sun and is 3800 times as luminous. Were it not dimmer by intervening interstellar dust, it would be significantly brighter at magnitude 2.11.
Delta Arae is a blue-white main sequence star of spectral type B8Vn and magnitude 3.6, 198 ± 4 light-years from Earth. It is around 3.56 times as massive as the Sun.
Epsilon1 Arae is an orange giant of apparent magnitude 4.1, 360 ± 10 light-years distant from Earth. It is around 74% more massive than the Sun. At an age of about 1.7 billion years, the outer envelope of the star has expanded to almost 34 times the Sun's radius.
Eta Arae is an orange giant of apparent magnitude 3.76, located 299 ± 5 light-years distant from Earth. Estimated to be around five billion years old, it has reached the giant star stage of its evolution. With 1.12 times the mass of the Sun, it has an outer envelope that has expanded to 40 times the Sun's radius. The star is now spinning so slowly that it takes more than eleven years to complete a single rotation.
GX 339-4 (V821 Arae) is a moderately strong variable galactic low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB) sourceSIMBADBradt, H.V.D., and McClintock, J.E., Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys., 21, 13-66 (1983) and black-hole candidate that flares from time to time. From spectroscopic measurements, the mass of the black-hole was found to be at least of 5.8 solar masses.
Exoplanets have been discovered in seven star systems in the constellation. Mu Arae (Cervantes) is a sunlike star that hosts four planets. HD 152079 is a sunlike star with a jupiter-like planet with an orbital period of 2097 ± 930 days. HD 154672 is an ageing sunlike star with a Hot Jupiter. HD 154857 is a sunlike star with one confirmed and one suspected planet. HD 156411 is a star hotter and larger than the sun with a gas giant planet in orbit. Gliese 674 is a nearby red dwarf star with a planet. Gliese 676 is a binary star system composed of two red dwarves with four planets.
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Ara (constellation)
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Deep-sky objects
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Deep-sky objects
thumb|IC 4653 galaxy taken by Hubble.
The northwest corner of Ara is crossed by the galactic plane of the Milky Way and contains several open clusters (notably NGC 6200) and diffuse nebulae (including the bright cluster/nebula pair NGC 6188 and NGC 6193). The brightest of the globular clusters, sixth magnitude NGC 6397, lies at a distance of just , making it one of the closest globular clusters to the Solar System.
Ara also contains Westerlund 1, a super star cluster containing itself the possible red supergiant Westerlund 1-237 and the red supergiant Westerlund 1-26. The latter is one of the largest stars known with an estimate varying between and .
Although Ara lies close to the heart of the Milky Way, two spiral galaxies (NGC 6215 and NGC 6221) are visible near star Eta Arae.
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Ara (constellation)
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Open clusters
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Open clusters
NGC 6193 is an open cluster containing approximately 30 stars with an overall magnitude of 5.0 and a size of 0.25 square degrees, about half the size of the full Moon. It is approximately 4200 light-years from Earth. It has one bright member, a double star with a blue-white hued primary of magnitude 5.6 and a secondary of magnitude 6.9. NGC 6193 is surrounded by NGC 6188, a faint nebula only normally visible in long-exposure photographs.
NGC 6200
NGC 6204
NGC 6208
NGC 6250
NGC 6253
IC 4651
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Ara (constellation)
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Globular clusters
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Globular clusters
NGC 6352
NGC 6362
NGC 6397 is a globular cluster with an overall magnitude of 6.0; it is visible to the naked eye under exceptionally dark skies and is normally visible in binoculars. It is a fairly close globular cluster, at a distance of 10,500 light-years.
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Ara (constellation)
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Planetary Nebulae
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Planetary Nebulae
The Stingray Nebula (Hen 3–1357), the youngest known planetary nebula as of 2010, formed in Ara; the light from its formation was first observable around 1987.
NGC 6326. A planetary nebula that might have a binary system at its center.
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Ara (constellation)
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Notes
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Notes
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Ara (constellation)
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References
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References
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Ara (constellation)
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Bibliography
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Bibliography
Online sources
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Ara (constellation)
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External links
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External links
The Deep Photographic Guide to the Constellations: Ara
Warburg Institute Iconographic Database (medieval and early modern images of Ara)
Category:Constellations
Category:Southern constellations
Category:Constellations listed by Ptolemy
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Ara (constellation)
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Table of Content
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Short description, History, Equivalents, Characteristics, Features, Stars, Deep-sky objects, Open clusters, Globular clusters, Planetary Nebulae, Notes, References, Bibliography, External links
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Auriga (disambiguation)
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'''[[Auriga]]'''
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Auriga is a constellation.
Auriga or AURIGA may also refer to:
Auriga (slave), a Roman charioteer
HMS Auriga (P419), a British submarine launched in 1945
Auriga of Delphi, name of the statue Charioteer of Delphi
USM Auriga, a fictional spaceship in the film Alien Resurrection
Auriga, a fictional planet in the Endless franchise by Amplitude Studios
AURIGA, a gravitational wave detector in Italy
Auriga-1.2V (Аурига-1.2В), a Russian satellite communications system, and a component of the MK VTR-016 (МК ВТР-016) mobile video transmission system
, a number of steamships with this name; it is also the name of a diesel ship (MSC Orion-class container ship)
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Auriga (disambiguation)
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Table of Content
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'''[[Auriga]]'''
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Arkansas
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Short description
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Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the West South Central region of the Southern United States.Jones, Daniel (1997) English Pronouncing Dictionary, 15th ed. Cambridge University Press. . It borders Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, Texas to the southwest, and Oklahoma to the west. Its name derives from the Osage language, and refers to their relatives, the Quapaw people. The state's diverse geography ranges from the mountainous regions of the Ozark and Ouachita Mountains, which make up the U.S. Interior Highlands, to the densely forested land in the south known as the Arkansas Timberlands, to the eastern lowlands along the Mississippi River and the Arkansas Delta.
Previously part of French Louisiana and the Louisiana Purchase, the Territory of Arkansas was admitted to the Union as the 25th state on June 15, 1836. Much of the Delta had been developed for cotton plantations, and landowners there largely depended on enslaved African Americans' labor. In 1861, Arkansas seceded from the United States and joined the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. On returning to the Union in 1868, Arkansas continued to suffer economically, due to its overreliance on the large-scale plantation economy. Cotton remained the leading commodity crop, and the cotton market declined. Because farmers and businessmen did not diversify and there was little industrial investment, the state fell behind in economic opportunity. In the late 19th century, the state instituted various Jim Crow laws to disenfranchise and segregate the African-American population. White interests dominated Arkansas's politics, with disenfranchisement of African Americans and refusal to reapportion the legislature; only after the federal legislation passed were more African Americans able to vote. During the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, Arkansas and particularly Little Rock were major battlegrounds for efforts to integrate schools. Following World War II in the 1940s, Arkansas began to diversify its economy and see prosperity. During the 1960s, the state became the base of the Walmart corporation, the world's largest company by revenue, headquartered in Bentonville.
Arkansas is the 29th largest by area and the 33rd most populous state, with a population of just over three million at the 2020 census. The capital and most populous city is Little Rock, in the central part of the state, a hub for transportation, business, culture, and government. The northwestern corner of the state, namely the Fayetteville–Springdale–Rogers Metropolitan Area, is a population, education, cultural, and economic center. The Fort Smith Metropolitan Area is also an economic center and is known for its historic sites related to western expansion and the persecution of Native Americans. The largest city in the state's eastern part is Jonesboro. The largest city in the state's southeastern part is Pine Bluff.
In the 21st century, Arkansas's economy is based on service industries, aircraft, poultry, steel, and tourism, along with important commodity crops of cotton, soybeans and rice. The state supports a network of public universities and colleges, including two major university systems: Arkansas State University System and University of Arkansas System. Arkansas's culture is observable in museums, theaters, novels, television shows, restaurants, and athletic venues across the state.
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Arkansas
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Etymology
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Etymology
The name Arkansas initially applied to the Arkansas River. It derives from a French term, Arcansas, their plural term for their transliteration of akansa, an Algonquian term for the Quapaw people, which is believed to translate to "south wind people." These were a Dhegiha Siouan-speaking people who settled in Arkansas around the 13th century. Kansa is likely also the root term for Kansas, which was named after the related Kaw people.
The name has been pronounced and spelled in a variety of ways. In 1881, the state legislature defined the official pronunciation of Arkansas as having the final "s" be silent (as it would be in French). A dispute had arisen between the state's two senators over the pronunciation issue. One favored (), the other ().
In 2007, the state legislature passed a non-binding resolution declaring that the possessive form of the state's name is Arkansas's, which the state government has increasingly followed.
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Arkansas
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History
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History
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Arkansas
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Early history
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Early history
thumb|left|Platform mounds were constructed frequently during the Woodland and Mississippian periods.
Before European settlement of North America, Arkansas was inhabited by indigenous peoples for thousands of years. The Caddo, Osage, and Quapaw peoples encountered European explorers. The first of these Europeans was Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto in 1541, who crossed the Mississippi and marched across central Arkansas and the Ozark Mountains. After finding nothing he considered of value and encountering native resistance the entire way, he and his men returned to the Mississippi River where de Soto fell ill. From his deathbed he ordered his men to massacre all the men of the nearby village of Anilco, who he feared had been plotting with a powerful polity down the Mississippi River, Quigualtam. His men obeyed and did not stop with the men, but were said to have massacred women and children as well. He died the following day in what is believed to be the vicinity of modern-day McArthur, Arkansas, in May 1542. His body was weighted down with sand and he was consigned to a watery grave in the Mississippi River under cover of darkness by his men. De Soto had attempted to deceive the native population into thinking he was an immortal deity, sun of the sun, in order to forestall attack by outraged Native Americans on his by then weakened and bedraggled army. In order to keep the ruse up, his men informed the locals that de Soto had ascended into the sky. His will at the time of his death listed "four Indian slaves, three horses and 700 hogs" which were auctioned off. The starving men, who had been living off maize stolen from natives, immediately started butchering the hogs and later, commanded by former aide-de-camp Moscoso, attempted an overland return to Mexico. They made it as far as Texas before running into territory too dry for maize farming and too thinly populated to sustain themselves by stealing food from the locals. The expedition promptly backtracked to Arkansas. After building a small fleet of boats they then headed down the Mississippi River and eventually on to Mexico by water.Davidson, James West. After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection Volume 1. Mc Graw Hill, New York 2010, Chapter 1, p. 2,3
Later explorers included the French Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet in 1673, and Frenchmen Robert La Salle and Henri de Tonti in 1681.Fletcher 1989, p. 26. Tonti established Arkansas Post at a Quapaw village in 1686, making it the first European settlement in the territory.Arnold 1992, p. 75. The early Spanish or French explorers of the state gave it its name, which is probably a phonetic spelling of the Illinois tribe's name for the Quapaw people, who lived downriver from them. The name Arkansas has been pronounced and spelled in a variety of fashions. The region was organized as the Territory of Arkansaw on July 4, 1819, with the territory admitted to the United States as the state of Arkansas on June 15, 1836. The name was historically , , and several other variants. Historically and modernly, the people of Arkansas call themselves either "Arkansans" or "Arkansawyers". In 1881, the Arkansas General Assembly passed Arkansas Code 1-4-105 (official text):
Whereas, confusion of practice has arisen in the pronunciation of the name of our state and it is deemed important that the true pronunciation should be determined for use in oral official proceedings.
And, whereas, the matter has been thoroughly investigated by the State Historical Society and the Eclectic Society of Little Rock, which have agreed upon the correct pronunciation as derived from history, and the early usage of the American immigrants.
Be it therefore resolved by both houses of the General Assembly, that the only true pronunciation of the name of the state, in the opinion of this body, is that received by the French from the native Indians and committed to writing in the French word representing the sound. It should be pronounced in three (3) syllables, with the final "s" silent, the "a" in each syllable with the Italian sound, and the accent on the first and last syllables. The pronunciation with the accent on the second syllable with the sound of "a" in "man" and the sounding of the terminal "s" is an innovation to be discouraged.
Citizens of the state of Kansas often pronounce the Arkansas River as , in a manner similar to the common pronunciation of the name of their state.
Settlers, such as fur trappers, moved to Arkansas in the early 18th century. These people used Arkansas Post as a home base and entrepôt. During the colonial period, Arkansas changed hands between France and Spain following the Seven Years' War, although neither showed interest in the remote settlement of Arkansas Post.Arnold et al. 2002, p. 82. In April 1783, Arkansas saw its only battle of the American Revolutionary War, a brief siege of the post by British Captain James Colbert with the assistance of the Choctaw and Chickasaw.
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Arkansas
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Purchase and statehood
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Purchase and statehood
thumb|Map of the Arkansas Territory
Napoleon Bonaparte sold French Louisiana to the United States in 1803, including all of Arkansas, in a transaction known today as the Louisiana Purchase. French soldiers remained as a garrison at Arkansas Post. Following the purchase, the balanced give-and-take relationship between settlers and Native Americans began to change all along the frontier, including in Arkansas.Arnold et al. 2002, p. 79. Following a controversy over allowing slavery in the territory, the Territory of Arkansas was organized on July 4, 1819. Gradual emancipation in Arkansas was struck down by one vote, the Speaker of the House Henry Clay, allowing Arkansas to organize as a slave territory.Johnson 1965, p. 58.
Slavery became a wedge issue in Arkansas, forming a geographic divide that remained for decades. Owners and operators of the cotton plantation economy in southeast Arkansas firmly supported slavery, as they perceived slave labor as the best or "only" economically viable method of harvesting their commodity crops. The "hill country" of northwest Arkansas was unable to grow cotton and relied on a cash-scarce, subsistence farming economy.Scroggs 1961, pp. 231–232.
thumb|upright=1.4|Arkansas statehood, 100th anniversary issue; released on June 15, 1936, on the 100th anniversary of Arkansas statehood. The old state house is depicted at center, the fort surrounding the Arkansas Post at left with the present day state capitol building at right.
As European Americans settled throughout the East Coast and into the Midwest, in the 1830s the United States government forced the removal of many Native American tribes to Arkansas and Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River.
Additional Native American removals began in earnest during the territorial period, with final Quapaw removal complete by 1833 as they were pushed into Indian Territory.White 1962, p. 197. The capital was relocated from Arkansas Post to Little Rock in 1821, during the territorial period.
When Arkansas applied for statehood, the slavery issue was again raised in Washington, D.C. Congress eventually approved the Arkansas Constitution after a 25-hour session, admitting Arkansas on June 15, 1836, as the 25th state and the 13th slave state, having a population of about 60,000.Scroggs 1961, p. 243. Arkansas struggled with taxation to support its new state government, a problem made worse by a state banking scandal and worse yet by the Panic of 1837.
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Arkansas
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Civil War and Reconstruction
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Civil War and Reconstruction
thumb|left|upright=1.3| Lakeport Plantation, built
In early antebellum Arkansas, the southeast Arkansas slave-based economy developed rapidly. On the eve of the American Civil War in 1860, enslaved African Americans numbered 111,115 people, just over 25% of the state's population.Historical Census Browser, 1860 US Census, University of Virginia . Retrieved March 21, 2008. A plantation system based largely on cotton agriculture developed that, after the war, kept the state and region behind the nation for decades.Arnold et al. 2002, p. 135. The wealth developed among planters of southeast Arkansas caused a political rift between the northwest and southeast.Bolton 1999, p. 22.
Many politicians were elected to office from the Family, the Southern rights political force in antebellum Arkansas. Residents generally wanted to avoid a civil war. When the Gulf states seceded in early 1861, delegates to a convention called to determine whether Arkansas should secede referred the question back to the voters for a referendum to be held in August. Arkansas did not secede until Abraham Lincoln demanded Arkansas troops be sent to Fort Sumter to quell the rebellion there. On May 6, the members of the state convention, having been recalled by the convention president, voted to terminate Arkansas's membership in the Union and join the Confederate States of America.
thumb|upright=1.3|Cannons at Battle of Pea Ridge site
Arkansas held a very important position for the Rebels, maintaining control of the Mississippi River and surrounding Southern states. The bloody Battle of Wilson's Creek just across the border in Missouri shocked many Arkansans who thought the war would be a quick and decisive Southern victory. Battles early in the war took place in northwest Arkansas, including the Battle of Cane Hill, Battle of Pea Ridge, and Battle of Prairie Grove. Union general Samuel Curtis swept across the state to Helena in the Delta in 1862. Little Rock was captured the following year. The government shifted the state Confederate capital to Hot Springs, and then again to Washington from 1863 to 1865, for the remainder of the war. Throughout the state, guerrilla warfare ravaged the countryside and destroyed cities.Arnold et al. 2002, p. 200. Passion for the Confederate cause waned after implementation of programs such as the draft, high taxes, and martial law.
Under the Military Reconstruction Act, Congress declared Arkansas restored to the Union in June 1868, after the Legislature accepted the 14th Amendment. The Republican-controlled reconstruction legislature established universal male suffrage (though temporarily disfranchising former Confederate Army officers, who were all Democrats), a public education system for blacks and whites, and passed general issues to improve the state and help more of the population. The State soon came under control of the Radical Republicans and Unionists, and led by Governor Powell Clayton, they presided over a time of great upheaval as Confederate sympathizers and the Ku Klux Klan fought the new developments, particularly voting rights for African Americans.
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Arkansas
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End of Reconstruction and late 19th century
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End of Reconstruction and late 19th century
In 1874, the Brooks-Baxter War, a political struggle between factions of the Republican Party shook Little Rock and the state governorship. It was settled only when President Ulysses S. Grant ordered Joseph Brooks to disperse his militant supporters.
Following the Brooks-Baxter War, a new state constitution was ratified, re-enfranchising former Confederates and effectively bringing an end to Reconstruction.
In 1881, the Arkansas state legislature enacted a bill that adopted an official pronunciation of the state's name, to combat a controversy then simmering. (See Law and Government below.)
After Reconstruction, the state began to receive more immigrants and migrants. Chinese, Italian, and Syrian men were recruited for farm labor in the developing Delta region. None of these nationalities stayed long at farm labor; the Chinese especially, as they quickly became small merchants in towns around the Delta. Many Chinese became such successful merchants in small towns that they were able to educate their children at college.William D. Baker, Minority Settlement in the Mississippi River Counties of the Arkansas Delta, 1870–1930 , Arkansas Preservation Commission. Retrieved May 14, 2008
Construction of railroads enabled more farmers to get their products to market. It also brought new development into different parts of the state, including the Ozarks, where some areas were developed as resorts. In a few years at the end of the 19th century, for instance, Eureka Springs in Carroll County grew to 10,000 people, rapidly becoming a tourist destination and the fourth-largest city of the state. It featured newly constructed, elegant resort hotels and spas planned around its natural springs, considered to have healthful properties. The town's attractions included horse racing and other entertainment. It appealed to a wide variety of classes, becoming almost as popular as Hot Springs.
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Arkansas
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Rise of the Jim Crow laws and early 20th century
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Rise of the Jim Crow laws and early 20th century
thumb|upright|right|A group of African American boys in Little Rock in 1938.
In the late 1880s, the worsening agricultural depression catalyzed Populist and third party movements, leading to interracial coalitions. Struggling to stay in power, in the 1890s the Democrats in Arkansas followed other Southern states in passing legislation and constitutional amendments that disfranchised blacks and poor whites. In 1891 state legislators passed a requirement for a literacy test, knowing it would exclude many blacks and whites. At the time, more than 25% of the population could neither read nor write. In 1892, they amended the state constitution to require a poll tax and more complex residency requirements, both of which adversely affected poor people and sharecroppers, forcing most blacks and many poor whites from voter rolls.
By 1900 the Democratic Party expanded use of the white primary in county and state elections, further denying blacks a part in the political process. Only in the primary was there any competition among candidates, as Democrats held all the power. The state was a Democratic one-party state for decades, until after passage of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 to enforce constitutional rights."White Primary" System Bars Blacks from Politics—1900, The Arkansas News, Old State House, Spring 1987, p.3. Retrieved March 22, 2008.
Between 1905 and 1911, Arkansas began to receive a small immigration of German, Slovak, and Scots-Irish from Europe. The German and Slovak peoples settled in the eastern part of the state known as the Prairie, and the Irish founded small communities in the southeast part of the state. The Germans were mostly Lutheran and the Slovaks were primarily Catholic. The Irish were mostly Protestant from Ulster, of Scots and Northern Borders descent. Some early 20th-century immigration included people from eastern Europe. Together, these immigrants made the Delta more diverse than the rest of the state. In the same years, some black migrants moved into the area because of opportunities to develop the bottomlands and own their own property.
Black sharecroppers began to try to organize a farmers' union after World WarI. They were seeking better conditions of payment and accounting from white landowners of the area cotton plantations. Whites resisted any change and often tried to break up their meetings. On September 30, 1919, two white men, including a local deputy, tried to break up a meeting of black sharecroppers who were trying to organize a farmers' union. After a white deputy was killed in a confrontation with guards at the meeting, word spread to town and around the area. Hundreds of whites from Phillips and neighboring areas rushed to suppress the blacks, and started attacking blacks at large. Governor Charles Hillman Brough requested federal troops to stop what was called the Elaine massacre. White mobs spread throughout the county, killing an estimated 237 blacks before most of the violence was suppressed after October 1.Elaine Massacre, Arkansas Encyclopedia of History and Culture; accessed April 3, 2008. Five whites also died in the incident. The governor accompanied the troops to the scene; President Woodrow Wilson had approved their use.
thumb|Map of the flood of 1927 in Arkansas
The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 flooded the areas along the Ouachita Rivers along with many other rivers.
Based on the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt given shortly after Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, nearly 16,000 Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from the West Coast of the United States and incarcerated in two internment camps in the Arkansas Delta. The Rohwer Camp in Desha County operated from September 1942 to November 1945 and at its peak interned 8,475 prisoners. The Jerome War Relocation Center in Drew County operated from October 1942 to June 1944 and held about 8,000.
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Arkansas
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Fall of segregation
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Fall of segregation
After the Supreme Court ruled segregation in public schools unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954), some students worked to integrate schools in the state. The Little Rock Nine brought Arkansas to national attention in 1957 when the federal government had to intervene to protect African-American students trying to integrate a high school in the capital. Governor Orval Faubus had ordered the Arkansas National Guard to help segregationists prevent nine African-American students from enrolling at Little Rock's Central High School. After attempting three times to contact Faubus, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent 1,000 troops from the active-duty 101st Airborne Division to escort and protect the African-American students as they entered school on September 25, 1957. In defiance of federal court orders to integrate, the governor and city of Little Rock decided to close the high schools for the remainder of the school year. By the fall of 1959, the Little Rock high schools were completely integrated.
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Arkansas
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Geography
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Geography
thumb|View from the Ozark Highlands Scenic Byway in Boxley Valley
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Arkansas
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Boundaries
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Boundaries
Arkansas borders Louisiana to the south, Texas to the southwest, Oklahoma to the west, Missouri to the north, and Tennessee and Mississippi to the east. The United States Census Bureau classifies Arkansas as a southern state, sub-categorized among the West South Central States. The Mississippi River forms most of its eastern border, except in Clay and Greene counties, where the St. Francis River forms the western boundary of the Missouri Bootheel, and in many places where the channel of the Mississippi has meandered (or been straightened by man) from its original 1836 course.
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Arkansas
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Terrain
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Terrain
thumb|The Ozarks rise behind a bend in the Buffalo River from an overlook on the Buffalo River Trail.
Arkansas can generally be split into two halves, the highlands in the northwest and the lowlands of the southeast.Smith 1989, p. 15. The highlands are part of the Southern Interior Highlands, including The Ozarks and the Ouachita Mountains. The southern lowlands include the Gulf Coastal Plain and the Arkansas Delta.Smith 1989, pp. 15–17. This split can yield to a regional division into northwest, southwest, northeast, southeast, and central Arkansas. These regions are broad and not defined along county lines. Arkansas has seven distinct natural regions: the Ozark Mountains, Ouachita Mountains, Arkansas River Valley, Gulf Coastal Plain, Crowley's Ridge, and the Arkansas Delta, with Central Arkansas sometimes included as a blend of multiple regions.
thumb|The flat terrain and rich soils of the Arkansas Delta near Arkansas City are in stark contrast to the northwestern part of the state.
The southeastern part of Arkansas along the Mississippi Alluvial Plain is sometimes called the Arkansas Delta. This region is a flat landscape of rich alluvial soils formed by repeated flooding of the adjacent Mississippi. Farther from the river, in the southeastern part of the state, the Grand Prairie has a more undulating landscape. Both are fertile agricultural areas. The Delta region is bisected by a geological formation known as Crowley's Ridge. A narrow band of rolling hills, Crowley's Ridge rises above the surrounding alluvial plain and underlies many of eastern Arkansas's major towns.Smith 1989, p. 19.
Northwest Arkansas is part of the Ozark Plateau including the Ozark Mountains, to the south are the Ouachita Mountains, and these regions are divided by the Arkansas River; the southern and eastern parts of Arkansas are called the Lowlands.Federal Writers' Project 1987, p. 6. These mountain ranges are part of the U.S. Interior Highlands region, the only major mountainous region between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachian Mountains. The state's highest point is Mount Magazine in the Ouachita Mountains, which is above sea level.
thumb|Cedar Falls in Petit Jean State Park
Arkansas is home to many caves, such as Blanchard Springs Caverns. The State Archeologist has catalogued more than 43,000 Native American living, hunting and tool-making sites, many of them Pre-Columbian burial mounds and rock shelters. Crater of Diamonds State Park near Murfreesboro is the world's only diamond-bearing site accessible to the public for digging. Arkansas is home to a dozen Wilderness Areas totaling . These areas are set aside for outdoor recreation and are open to hunting, fishing, hiking, and primitive camping. No mechanized vehicles nor developed campgrounds are allowed in these areas.
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Arkansas
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Hydrology
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Hydrology
right|thumb|The Buffalo National River is one of many attractions that give the state its nickname, The Natural State
Arkansas has many rivers, lakes, and reservoirs within or along its borders. Major tributaries to the Mississippi River include the Arkansas River, the White River, and the St. Francis River.Federal Writers' Project 1987, p. 8. The Arkansas is fed by the Mulberry and Fourche LaFave Rivers in the Arkansas River Valley, which is also home to Lake Dardanelle. The Buffalo, Little Red, Black and Cache Rivers are all tributaries to the White River, which also empties into the Mississippi. Bayou Bartholomew and the Saline, Little Missouri, and Caddo Rivers are all tributaries to the Ouachita River in south Arkansas, which empties into the Mississippi in Louisiana. The Red River briefly forms the state's boundary with Texas.Smith 1989, p. 24. Arkansas has few natural lakes and many reservoirs, such as Bull Shoals Lake, Lake Ouachita, Greers Ferry Lake, Millwood Lake, Beaver Lake, Norfork Lake, DeGray Lake, and Lake Conway.Smith 1989, p. 25.
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Arkansas
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Flora and fauna
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Flora and fauna
right|thumb|The White River in eastern Arkansas
Arkansas's mix of warm temperate moist forest and subtropical bottomland is divided into three broad ecoregions: the Ozark, Ouachita-Appalachian Forests, the Mississippi Alluvial and Southeast USA Coastal Plains, and the Southeastern USA Plains. The state is further divided into seven subregions: the Arkansas Valley, Boston Mountains, Mississippi Alluvial Plain, Mississippi Valley Loess Plain, Ozark Highlands, Ouachita Mountains, and the South Central Plains. A 2010 United States Forest Service survey determined of Arkansas's land is forestland, or 56% of the state's total area. Dominant species in Arkansas's forests include Quercus (oak), Carya (hickory), Pinus echinata (shortleaf pine) and Pinus taeda (loblolly pine).
Arkansas's plant life varies with its climate and elevation. The pine belt stretching from the Arkansas delta to Texas consists of dense oak-hickory-pine growth. Lumbering and paper milling activity is active throughout the region.Federal Writers' Project 1987, p. 13. In eastern Arkansas, one can find Taxodium (cypress), Quercus nigra (water oaks), and hickories with their roots submerged in the Mississippi Valley bayous indicative of the Deep South. Saw palmetto and needle palm both range into Arkansas.Federal Writers' Project 1987, p. 12. Nearby Crowley's Ridge is the only home of the tulip tree in the state, and generally hosts more northeastern plant life such as the beech tree.Federal Writers' Project 1987, pp. 12–13. The northwestern highlands are covered in an oak-hickory mixture, with Ozark white cedars, cornus (dogwoods), and Cercis canadensis (redbuds) also present. The higher peaks in the Arkansas River Valley play host to scores of ferns, including the Physematium scopulinum and Adiantum (maidenhair fern) on Mount Magazine.Federal Writers' Project 1987, pp. 13–14. The white-tailed deer is the official state mammal.
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Arkansas
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Climate
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Climate
thumb|Rare snowy winter at Historic Washington State Park in Hempstead County
Arkansas generally has a humid subtropical climate. While not bordering the Gulf of Mexico, Arkansas, is still close enough to the warm, large body of water for it to influence the weather in the state. Generally, Arkansas, has hot, humid summers and slightly drier, mild to cool winters. In Little Rock, the daily high temperatures average around with lows around in July. In January highs average around and lows around . In Siloam Springs in the northwest part of the state, the average high and low temperatures in July are and in January the average high and low are . Annual precipitation throughout the state averages between about ; it is somewhat wetter in the south and drier in the northern part of the state. Snowfall is infrequent but most common in the northern half of the state. The half of the state south of Little Rock is more apt to see ice storms. Arkansas's record high is at Ozark on August 10, 1936; the record low is at Gravette, on February 13, 1905.
Arkansas is known for extreme weather and frequent storms. A typical year brings thunderstorms, tornadoes, and hail. Occasional cold snaps stand to bring varying amounts of snow, as well as ice storms. Between both the Great Plains and the Gulf States, Arkansas, receives around 60 days of thunderstorms. Arkansas is located in Dixie alley, and very near tornado alley. As a result, a few of the most destructive tornadoes in U.S. history have struck the state. While sufficiently far from the coast to avoid a direct hit from a hurricane, Arkansas can often get the remnants of a tropical system, which dumps tremendous amounts of rain in a short time and often spawns smaller tornadoes.
Monthly Normal High and Low Temperatures For Various Arkansas Cities City Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Avg Fayetteville 44/24(7/-4) 51/29(10/-2) 59/38(15/3) 69/46(20/8) 76/55(24/13) 84/64(29/18) 89/69(32/20) 89/67(32/19) 81/59(27/15) 70/47(21/9) 57/37(14/3) 48/28(9/-2) 68/47(20/8) Jonesboro 45/26(7/-3) 51/30(11/-1) 61/40(16/4) 71/49(22/9) 80/58(26/15) 88/67(31/19) 92/71(34/22) 91/69(33/20) 84/61(29/16) 74/49(23/9) 60/39(15/4) 49/30(10/-1) 71/49(21/9) Little Rock 51/31(11/-1) 55/35(13/2) 64/43(18/6) 73/51(23/11) 81/61(27/16) 89/69(32/21) 93/73(34/23) 93/72(34/22) 86/65(30/18) 75/53(24/12) 63/42(17/6) 52/34(11/1) 73/51(23/11) Texarkana 53/31(11/-1) 58/34(15/1) 67/42(19/5) 75/50(24/10) 82/60(28/16) 89/68(32/20) 93/72(34/22) 93/71(34/21) 86/64(30/18) 76/52(25/11) 64/41(18/5) 55/33(13/1) 74/52(23/11) Monticello 52/30(11/-1) 58/34(14/1) 66/43(19/6) 74/49(23/10) 82/59(28/15) 89/66(32/19) 92/70(34/21) 92/68(33/20) 86/62(30/17) 76/50(25/10) 64/41(18/5) 55/34(13/1) 74/51(23/10) Fort Smith 48/27(8/-2) 54/32(12/0) 64/40(17/4) 73/49(22/9) 80/58(26/14) 87/67(30/19) 92/71(33/21) 92/70(33/21) 84/62(29/17) 75/50(23/10) 61/39(16/4) 50/31(10/0) 72/50(22/10) Average high °F/average low °F (average high °C/average low°C)
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Arkansas
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Cities and towns
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Cities and towns
right|thumb|Cleveland County Courthouse in Rison
Little Rock has been Arkansas's capital city since 1821 when it replaced Arkansas Post as the capital of the Territory of Arkansas. The state capitol was moved to Hot Springs and later Washington during the American Civil War when the Union armies threatened the city in 1862, and state government did not return to Little Rock until after the war ended. Today, the Little Rock–North Little Rock–Conway metropolitan area is the largest in the state, with a population of 724,385 in 2013.
The Fayetteville–Springdale–Rogers Metropolitan Area is the second-largest metropolitan area in Arkansas, growing at the fastest rate due to the influx of businesses and the growth of the University of Arkansas and Walmart.
The state has eight cities with populations above 50,000 (based on 2010 census). In descending order of size, they are Little Rock, Fort Smith, Fayetteville, Springdale, Jonesboro, North Little Rock, Conway, and Rogers. Of these, only Fort Smith and Jonesboro are outside the two largest metropolitan areas. Other cities in Arkansas include Pine Bluff, Crossett, Bryant, Lake Village, Hot Springs, Bentonville, Texarkana, Sherwood, Jacksonville, Russellville, Bella Vista, West Memphis, Paragould, Cabot, Searcy, Van Buren, El Dorado, Blytheville, Harrison, Dumas, Rison, Warren, and Mountain Home.
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Arkansas
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Demographics
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Demographics
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Arkansas
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Population
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Population
The United States Census Bureau estimated that the population of Arkansas was 3,017,804 on July 1, 2019, a 3.49% increase since the 2010 United States census. At the 2020 U.S. census, Arkansas had a resident population of 3,011,524.
From fewer than 15,000 in 1820, Arkansas's population grew to 52,240 during a special census in 1835, far exceeding the 40,000 required to apply for statehood.Arnold et al. 2002, p. 106. Following statehood in 1836, the population doubled each decade until the 1870 census conducted following the American Civil War. The state recorded growth in each successive decade, although it gradually slowed in the 20th century.
It recorded population losses in the 1950 and 1960 censuses. This outmigration was a result of multiple factors, including farm mechanization, decreasing labor demand, and young educated people leaving the state due to a lack of non-farming industry in the state. Arkansas again began to grow, recording positive growth rates ever since and exceeding two million by the 1980 census. Arkansas's rate of change, age distributions, and gender distributions mirror national averages. Minority group data also approximates national averages. There are fewer people in Arkansas of Hispanic or Latino origin than the national average. The center of population of Arkansas for 2000 was located in Perry County, near Nogal.
According to HUD's 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report, there were an estimated 2,459 homeless people in Arkansas.
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Arkansas
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Race and ethnicity
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Race and ethnicity
Per the 2019 census estimates, Arkansas was 72.0% non-Hispanic white, 15.4% Black or African American, 0.5% American Indian and Alaska Native, 1.5% Asian, 0.4% Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, 0.1% some other race, 2.4% two or more races, and 7.7% Hispanic or Latin American of any race. In 2011, the state was 80.1% white (74.2% non-Hispanic white), 15.6% Black or African American, 0.9% American Indian and Alaska Native, 1.3% Asian, and 1.8% from two or more races. Hispanics or Latinos of any race made up 6.6% of the population. As of 2011, 39.0% of Arkansas's population younger than age1 were minorities.
Ethnic composition as of the 2020 census Race and ethnicityAloneTotal White (non-Hispanic) African American (non-Hispanic) Hispanic or Latino Asian Native American Pacific Islander Other
thumb|330x330px|Ethnic origins in Arkansas
thumb|187x187px|Map of counties in Arkansas by racial plurality, per the 2020 U.S. census
+ Arkansas Racial Breakdown of Population Racial composition 1990 2000 2010 2020 White 82.7% 80.0% 77.0% 70.2% African American 15.9% 15.7% 15.4% 15.1% Asian 0.5% 0.8% 1.2% 1.7% Native 0.5% 0.7% 0.8% 0.9% Native Hawaiian andother Pacific Islander – 0.1% 0.2% 0.5% Other race 0.3% 1.5% 3.4% 4.5% Two or more races – 1.3% 2.0% 7.1%
European Americans have a strong presence in the northwestern Ozarks and the central part of the state. African Americans live mainly in the southern and eastern parts of the state. Arkansans of Irish, English and German ancestry are mostly found in the far northwestern Ozarks near the Missouri border. Ancestors of the Irish in the Ozarks were chiefly Scots-Irish, Protestants from Northern Ireland, the Scottish lowlands and northern England part of the largest group of immigrants from Great Britain and Ireland before the American Revolution. English and Scots-Irish immigrants settled throughout the back country of the South and in the more mountainous areas. Americans of English stock are found throughout the state.David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989, pp.633–639
A 2010 survey of the principal ancestries of Arkansas's residents revealed the following: 15.5% African American, 12.3% Irish, 11.5% German, 11.0% American, 10.1% English, 4.7% Mexican, 2.1% French, 1.7% Scottish, 1.7% Dutch, 1.6% Italian, and 1.4% Scots-Irish.
Most people identifying as "American" are of English descent or Scots-Irish descent. Their families have been in the state so long, in many cases since before statehood, that they choose to identify simply as having American ancestry or do not in fact know their ancestry. Their ancestry primarily goes back to the original 13 colonies and for this reason many of them today simply claim American ancestry. Many people who identify as of Irish descent are in fact of Scots-Irish descent.Sharing the Dream: White Males in a Multicultural America By Dominic J. Pulera.Reynolds Farley, 'The New Census Question about Ancestry: What Did It Tell Us?', Demography, Vol. 28, No. 3 (August 1991), pp. 414, 421.Stanley Lieberson and Lawrence Santi, 'The Use of Nativity Data to Estimate Ethnic Characteristics and Patterns', Social Science Research, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1985), pp. 44–6.Stanley Lieberson and Mary C. Waters, 'Ethnic Groups in Flux: The Changing Ethnic Responses of American Whites', Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 487, No. 79 (September 1986), pp. 82–86.
According to the American Immigration Council, in 2015, the top countries of origin for Arkansas' immigrants were Mexico, El Salvador, India, Vietnam, and Guatemala.(2017). Immigrants in Arkansas. American Immigrant Council. https://www.immigrationresearch.org/system/files/immigrants_in_arkansas.pdf
According to the 2006–2008 American Community Survey, 93.8% of Arkansas's population (over the age of five) spoke only English at home. About 4.5% of the state's population spoke Spanish at home. About 0.7% of the state's population spoke another Indo-European language. About 0.8% of the state's population spoke an Asian language, and 0.2% spoke other languages.
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Arkansas
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Religion
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Religion
Like most other Southern states, Arkansas is part of the Bible Belt and predominantly Protestant. The largest denominations by number of adherents in 2010 were the Southern Baptist Convention with 661,382; the United Methodist Church with 158,574; non-denominational Evangelical Protestants with 129,638; the Catholic Church with 122,662; and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with 31,254. Other religions include Islam, Judaism, Wicca/Paganism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and some residents have no religious affiliation.
In 2014, the Pew Research Center determined that 79% of the population was Christian, dominated by evangelicals in the Southern Baptist and independent Baptist churches. In contrast with many other states, the Catholic Church as of 2014 was not the largest Christian denomination in Arkansas. Of the unaffiliated population, 2% were atheist in 2014. By 2020, the Public Religion Research Institute determined 71% of the population was Christian. Arkansas continued to be dominated by evangelicals, followed by mainline Protestants and historically black or African American churches.
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Arkansas
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Economy
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Economy
right|thumb|upright|The Simmons Tower in Little Rock is the state's tallest building.
Once a state with a cashless society in the uplands and plantation agriculture in the lowlands, Arkansas's economy has evolved and diversified. The state's gross domestic product (GDP) was $176.24billion in 2023. Six Fortune 500 companies are based in Arkansas, including the world's #1 retailer, Walmart; Tyson Foods, J.B. Hunt, Dillard's, Murphy USA, and Windstream are also headquartered in the state. The per capita personal income in 2023 was $54,347, ranking 46th in the nation, and the median household income was $55,432, which ranked 47th. The state's agriculture outputs are poultry and eggs, soybeans, sorghum, cattle, cotton, rice, hogs, and milk. Its industrial outputs are food processing, electric equipment, fabricated metal products, machinery, and paper products. Arkansas's mines produce natural gas, oil, crushed stone, bromine, and vanadium. According to CNBC, Arkansas is the 20th-best state for business, with the 2nd-lowest cost of doing business, 5th-lowest cost of living, 11th-best workforce, 20th-best economic climate, 28th-best-educated workforce, 31st-best infrastructure and the 32nd-friendliest regulatory environment. Arkansas gained 12 spots in the best state for business rankings since 2011. As of 2014, it was the most affordable state to live in.
As of July 2023, the state's unemployment rate was 2.6%; the preliminary rate for December 2023 is 3.4%.
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Arkansas
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Industry and commerce
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Industry and commerce
Arkansas's earliest industries were fur trading and agriculture, with development of cotton plantations in the areas near the Mississippi River. They were dependent on slave labor through the American Civil War.
Today only about three percent of the population are employed in the agricultural sector, it remains a major part of the state's economy, ranking 13th in the nation in the value of products sold. Arkansas is the nation's largest producer of rice, broilers, and turkeys,U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service, Poultry—Production and Value, 2010 Summary, data indicates Arkansas led the nation in 2008, 2009, and 2010, in both broilers and turkeys. and ranks in the top three for cotton, pullets, and aquaculture (catfish). Forestry remains strong in the Arkansas Timberlands, and the state ranks fourth nationally and first in the South in softwood lumber production. Automobile parts manufacturers have opened factories in eastern Arkansas to support auto plants in other states. Bauxite was formerly a large part of the state's economy, mined mostly around Saline County.
Tourism is also very important to the Arkansas economy; the official state nickname "The Natural State" was created for state tourism advertising in the 1970s, and is still used to this day. The state maintains 52 state parks and the National Park Service maintains seven properties in Arkansas. The completion of the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock has drawn many visitors to the city and revitalized the nearby River Market District. Many cities also hold festivals, which draw tourists to Arkansas culture, such as The Bradley County Pink Tomato Festival in Warren, King Biscuit Blues Festival, Ozark Folk Festival, Toad Suck Daze, and Tontitown Grape Festival.
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Arkansas
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Transportation
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Transportation
thumb|The Greenville Bridge crosses over the Mississippi River into Shives.
Transportation in Arkansas is overseen by the Arkansas Department of Transportation (ArDOT), headquartered in Little Rock. Several main corridors pass through Little Rock, including Interstate30 (I-30) and I-40 (the nation's 3rd-busiest trucking corridor). Arkansas first designated a state highway system in 1924, and first numbered its roads in 1926. Arkansas had one of the first paved roads, the Dollarway Road, and one of the first members of the Interstate Highway System. The state maintains a large system of state highways today, in addition to eight Interstates and 20 U.S. Routes.
In northeast Arkansas, I-55 travels north from Memphis to Missouri, with a new spur to Jonesboro (I-555). Northwest Arkansas is served by the segment of I-49 from Fort Smith to the beginning of the Bella Vista Bypass. This segment of I-49 currently follows mostly the same route as the former section of I-540 that extended north of I-40. The state also has the 13th largest state highway system in the nation.
thumb|The Missouri and Northern Arkansas Railroad
Arkansas is served by of railroad track divided among twenty-six railroad companies including three Class I railroads. Freight railroads are concentrated in southeast Arkansas to serve the industries in the region. The Texas Eagle, an Amtrak passenger train, serves five stations in the state Walnut Ridge, Little Rock, Malvern, Arkadelphia, and Texarkana.
Arkansas also benefits from the use of its rivers for commerce. The Mississippi River and Arkansas River are both major rivers. The United States Army Corps of Engineers maintains the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System, allowing barge traffic up the Arkansas River to the Port of Catoosa in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
There are four airports with commercial service: Clinton National Airport (formerly Little Rock National Airport or Adams Field), Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport, Fort Smith Regional Airport, and Texarkana Regional Airport, with dozens of smaller airports in the state.
Intercity bus services across the state are provided by Flixbus, Greyhound Lines, and Jefferson Lines.
Public transit and community transport services for the elderly or those with developmental disabilities are provided by agencies such as the Central Arkansas Transit Authority and the Ozark Regional Transit, organizations that are part of the Arkansas Transit Association.
Local transit map
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Arkansas
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Government
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Government
As with the federal government of the United States, political power in Arkansas is divided into three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial. Each officer's term is four years long. Office holders are term-limited to two full terms plus any partial terms before the first full term.
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Arkansas
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Executive
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Executive
The governor of Arkansas is Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Sanders is a Republican and was inaugurated on January 10, 2023. The six other elected executive positions in Arkansas are lieutenant governor, secretary of state, attorney general, treasurer, auditor, and land commissioner.Arkansas Code 7 May 806. The governor also appoints the leaders of various state boards, committees, and departments. Arkansas governors served two-year terms until a referendum lengthened the term to four years, effective with the 1986 election. Individuals elected to these offices are limited to a lifetime total of two four-year terms per office.
In Arkansas, the lieutenant governor is elected separately from the governor and thus can be from a different political party.
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Arkansas
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Legislative
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Legislative
The Arkansas General Assembly is the state's bicameral bodies of legislators, composed of the Senate and House of Representatives. The Senate contains 35 members from districts of approximately equal population. These districts are redrawn decennially with each US census, and in election years ending in "2", the entire body is put up for reelection. Following the election, half of the seats are designated as two-year seats and are up for reelection again in two years, these "half-terms" do not count against a legislator's term limits. The remaining half serve a full four-year term. This staggers elections such that half the body is up for reelection every two years and allows for complete body turnover following redistricting. Arkansas House members can serve a maximum of three two-year terms. House districts are redistricted by the Arkansas Board of Apportionment.
In the 2012 elections, Arkansas voters elected a 21–14 Republican majority in the Senate and the Republicans gained a 51–49 majority in the House of Representatives. The 2012 elections established a Republican dominance in both bodies of legislature.
The Republican Party's majority status in the Arkansas State House of Representatives after the 2012 elections, is the party's first since 1874. Arkansas was the last state of the old Confederacy to not have Republican control of either chamber of its house since the American Civil War.
Following the term limits changes, studies have shown that lobbyists have become less influential in state politics. Legislative staff, not subject to term limits, have acquired additional power and influence due to the high rate of elected official turnover.
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Arkansas
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Judicial
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Judicial
Arkansas's judicial branch has five court systems: Arkansas Supreme Court, Arkansas Court of Appeals, Circuit Courts, District Courts and City Courts.
Most cases begin in district court, which is subdivided into state district court and local district court. State district courts exercise district-wide jurisdiction over the districts created by the General Assembly, and local district courts are presided over by part-time judges who may privately practice law. 25 state district court judges preside over 15 districts, with more districts created in 2013 and 2017. There are 28 judicial circuits of Circuit Court, with each contains five subdivisions: criminal, civil, probate, domestic relations, and juvenile court. The jurisdiction of the Arkansas Court of Appeals is determined by the Arkansas Supreme Court, and there is no right of appeal from the Court of Appeals to the high court. The Arkansas Supreme Court can review Court of Appeals cases upon application by either a party to the litigation, upon request by the Court of Appeals, or if the Arkansas Supreme Court feels the case should have been initially assigned to it. The twelve judges of the Arkansas Court of Appeals are elected from judicial districts to renewable six-year terms.
The Arkansas Supreme Court is the court of last resort in the state, composed of seven justices elected to eight-year terms. Established by the Arkansas Constitution in 1836, the court's decisions can be appealed to only the Supreme Court of the United States.
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Arkansas
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Federal
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Federal
Both Arkansas's U.S. senators, John Boozman and Tom Cotton, are Republicans. The state has four seats in U.S. House of Representatives. All four seats are held by Republicans: Rick Crawford (1st district), French Hill (2nd district), Steve Womack (3rd district), and Bruce Westerman (4th district).
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Arkansas
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Politics
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Politics
Party registration as of October 3, 2024 Party Total voters Percentage Nonpartisan 1,581,556 87.59% Republican 140,291 7.47% Democratic 88,969 4.89% Other 851 0.05% Total 1,811,667 100.00%
thumb|The Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock
Arkansas governor Bill Clinton brought national attention to the state with a long speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention endorsing Michael Dukakis. Some journalists suggested the speech was a threat to his ambitions; Clinton defined it "a comedy of error, just one of those fluky things".
He won the Democratic nomination for president in 1992. Clinton presented himself as a "New Democrat" and used incumbent George H. W. Bush's broken promise against him to win the 1992 presidential election with 43.0% of the vote to Bush's 37.5% and independent billionaire Ross Perot's 18.9%.
Most Republican strength traditionally lay mainly in the northwestern part of the state, particularly Fort Smith and Bentonville, as well as North Central Arkansas around the Mountain Home area. In the latter area, Republicans have been known to get 90% or more of the vote, while the rest of the state was more Democratic. After 2010, Republican strength expanded further to the Northeast and Southwest and into the Little Rock suburbs. The Democrats are mostly concentrated to central Little Rock, the Mississippi Delta, the Pine Bluff area, and the areas around the southern border with Louisiana.
Arkansas has elected only three Republicans to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction: Tim Hutchinson, who was defeated after one term by Mark Pryor; John Boozman, who defeated incumbent Blanche Lincoln; and Tom Cotton, who defeated Pryor in 2014. Before 2013, the General Assembly had not been controlled by the Republican Party since Reconstruction, with the GOP holding a 51-seat majority in the state House and a 21-seat (of 35) in the state Senate following victories in 2012. Arkansas was one of the only states of the former Confederacy other than Florida and Virginia that sent two Democrats to the U.S. Senate for any period during the first decade of the 21st century.
In 2010, Republicans captured three of the state's four seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 2012, they won election to all four House seats. Arkansas held the distinction of having a U.S. House delegation composed entirely of military veterans (Rick Crawford, Army; Tim Griffin, Army Reserve; Steve Womack, National Guard; Tom Cotton, Army). When Pryor was defeated in 2014, the entire congressional delegation was in GOP hands for the first time since Reconstruction.
Reflecting the state's large evangelical population, Arkansas has a strong social conservative bent. In the aftermath of the landmark Supreme Court decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, Arkansas became one of nine states where abortion is banned. Under the Arkansas Constitution, Arkansas is a right to work state. Its voters passed a ban on same-sex marriage in 2004, with 75% voting yes, although that ban has been inactive since the Supreme Court protected same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges.
Arkansas retains the death penalty. Authorized methods of execution include the electric chair.
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Arkansas
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Military
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Military
The Strategic Air Command facility of Little Rock Air Force Base was one of eighteen silos in the command of the 308th Strategic Missile Wing (308th SMW), specifically one of the nine silos within its 374th Strategic Missile Squadron (374th SMS). The squadron was responsible for Launch Complex 374–7, site of the 1980 explosion of a TitanII Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) in Damascus, Arkansas.
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Arkansas
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Taxation
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Taxation
Taxes are collected by the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration.
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Arkansas
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Health
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Health
thumb|UAMS Medical Center, Little Rock
As of 2012, Arkansas, as with many Southern states, has a high incidence of premature death, infant mortality, cardiovascular deaths, and occupational fatalities compared to the rest of the United States. The state is tied for 43rd with New York in percentage of adults who regularly exercise. Arkansas is usually ranked as one of the least healthy states due to high obesity, smoking, and sedentary lifestyle rates, but according to a Gallup poll, Arkansas made the most immediate progress in reducing its number of uninsured residents after the Affordable Care Act passed. The percentage of uninsured in Arkansas dropped from 22.5 in 2013 to 12.4 in August 2014.
The Arkansas Clean Indoor Air Act, a statewide smoking ban excluding bars and some restaurants, went into effect in 2006.
Healthcare in Arkansas is provided by a network of hospitals as members of the Arkansas Hospital Association. Major institutions with multiple branches include Baptist Health, Community Health Systems, and HealthSouth. The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) in Little Rock operates the UAMS Medical Center, a teaching hospital ranked as high performing nationally in cancer and nephrology. The pediatric division of UAMS Medical Center is known as Arkansas Children's Hospital, nationally ranked in pediatric cardiology and heart surgery. Together, these two institutions are the state's only Level I trauma centers.
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Arkansas
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Education
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Education
Arkansas has 1,064 state-funded kindergartens, elementary, junior and senior high schools.
The state supports a network of public universities and colleges, including two major university systems: Arkansas State University System and University of Arkansas System. The University of Arkansas, flagship campus of the University of Arkansas System in Fayetteville was ranked #63 among public schools in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Other public institutions include Arkansas State University, University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, Arkansas Tech University, Henderson State University, Southern Arkansas University, and University of Central Arkansas across the state. It is also home to 11 private colleges and universities including Hendrix College, one of the nation's top 100 liberal arts colleges, according to U.S. News & World Report.
In the 1920s the state required all children to attend public schools. The school year was set at 131 days, although some areas were unable to meet that requirement.
Generally prohibited in the Western world at large, school corporal punishment is not unusual in Arkansas, with 20,083 public school students paddled at least one time, according to government data for the 2011–12 school year. The rate of corporal punishment in public schools is higher only in Mississippi.
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Arkansas
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Media
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Media
As of 2010 many Arkansas local newspapers are owned by WEHCO Media, Alabama-based Lancaster Management, Kentucky-based Paxton Media Group, Missouri-based Rust Communications, Nevada-based Stephens Media, and New York-based GateHouse Media.
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Arkansas
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Culture
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Culture
thumb|188x188px|Van Buren Confederate Monument at the Crawford County Courthouse in Van Buren, Arkansas
The culture of Arkansas includes distinct cuisine, dialect, and traditional festivals. Sports are also very important to the culture, including football, baseball, basketball, hunting, and fishing. Perhaps the best-known aspect of Arkansas's culture is the stereotype that its citizens are shiftless hillbillies.Arnold et al. 2002, p. 115. The reputation began when early explorers characterized the state as a savage wilderness full of outlaws and thieves.Blevins 2009, p. 15. The most enduring icon of Arkansas's hillbilly reputation is The Arkansas Traveller, a painted depiction of a folk tale from the 1840s.Blevins 2009, p. 30. Though intended to represent the divide between rich southeastern plantation Arkansas planters and the poor northwestern hill country, the meaning was twisted to represent a Northerner lost in the Ozarks on a white horse asking a backwoods Arkansan for directions.Sutherlin 1996, p. 20. The state also suffers from the racial stigma common to former Confederate states, with historical events such as the Little Rock Nine adding to Arkansas's enduring image.Sutherlin 1996, p. 17.
Art and history museums display pieces of cultural value for Arkansans and tourists to enjoy. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville was visited by 604,000 people in 2012, its first year. The museum includes walking trails and educational opportunities in addition to displaying over 450 works covering five centuries of American art. Several historic town sites have been restored as Arkansas state parks, including Historic Washington State Park, Powhatan Historic State Park, and Davidsonville Historic State Park.
Arkansas features a variety of native music across the state, ranging from the blues heritage of West Memphis, Pine Bluff, Helena–West Helena to rockabilly, bluegrass, and folk music from the Ozarks. Festivals such as the King Biscuit Blues Festival and Bikes, Blues, and BBQ pay homage to the history of blues in the state. The Ozark Folk Festival in Mountain View is a celebration of Ozark culture and often features folk and bluegrass musicians. Literature set in Arkansas such as I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and A Painted House by John Grisham describe the culture at various time periods.
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Arkansas
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Sports and recreation
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Sports and recreation
thumb|The flooded, forested bottomlands of east Arkansas attract wintering waterfowl.
Team sports and especially collegiate football are important to Arkansans. College football in Arkansas began from humble beginnings, when the University of Arkansas first fielded a team in 1894. Over the years, many Arkansans have looked to Arkansas Razorbacks football as the public image of the state. Although the University of Arkansas is based in Fayetteville, the Razorbacks have always played at least one game per season at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock in an effort to keep fan support in central and south Arkansas.
Arkansas State University became the second NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) (then known as Division I-A) team in the state in 1992 after playing in lower divisions for nearly two decades. The two schools have never played each other, due to the University of Arkansas's policy of not playing intrastate games. Two other campuses of the University of Arkansas System are Division I members. The University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff is a member of the Southwestern Athletic Conference, a league whose members all play football in the second-level Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). The University of Arkansas at Little Rock, known for sports purposes as Little Rock, joined the Ohio Valley Conference in 2022 after playing in the Sun Belt Conference; unlike many other OVC members, it does not field a football program. The state's other DivisionI member is the University of Central Arkansas (UCA), which joined the ASUN Conference in 2021 after leaving the FCS Southland Conference. Because the ASUN does not plan to start FCS football competition until at least 2022, UCA football is competing in the Western Athletic Conference as part of a formal football partnership between the two leagues. Seven of Arkansas's smaller colleges play in NCAA Division II, with six in the Great American Conference and one in the Lone Star Conference. Two other small Arkansas colleges compete in NCAA Division III, in which athletic scholarships are prohibited. High school football also began to grow in Arkansas in the early 20th century.
Baseball runs deep in Arkansas and was popular before the state hosted Major League Baseball (MLB) spring training in Hot Springs from 1886 to the 1920s. Two minor league teams are based in the state. The Arkansas Travelers play at Dickey–Stephens Park in North Little Rock, and the Northwest Arkansas Naturals play in Arvest Ballpark in Springdale. Both teams compete in Double-A Central.
Hunting continues in the state. The state created the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission in 1915 to regulate hunting. Today a significant portion of Arkansas's population participates in hunting duck in the Mississippi flyway and deer across the state.Sutherlin 1996, p. 164. Ducks Unlimited has called Stuttgart, Arkansas, "the epicenter of the duck universe". Millions of acres of public land are available for both bow and modern gun hunters.
Fishing has always been popular in Arkansas, and the sport and the state have benefited from the creation of reservoirs across the state. Following the completion of Norfork Dam, the Norfork Tailwater and the White River have become a destination for trout fishers. Several smaller retirement communities such as Bull Shoals, Hot Springs Village, and Fairfield Bay have flourished due to their position on a fishing lake. The National Park Service has preserved the Buffalo National River in its natural state and fly fishers visit it annually.
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Arkansas
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Attractions
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Attractions
thumb|Blanchard Springs Caverns in Stone County
Arkansas Post National Memorial at Gillett
Blanchard Springs Caverns
Buffalo National River
Fort Smith National Historic Site
Hot Springs National Park
Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site
Pea Ridge National Military Park
President William Jefferson Clinton Birthplace Home National Historic Site
Arkansas State Capitol Building
List of Arkansas state parks
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Arkansas
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See also
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See also
Index of Arkansas-related articles
Outline of Arkansas
Spanish Empire
History of Louisiana
USS Arkansas, 5 ships
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Arkansas
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Notes
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Notes
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Arkansas
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References
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References
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Arkansas
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Bibliography
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Bibliography
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Arkansas
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Further reading
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Further reading
Blair, Diane D. & Jay Barth Arkansas Politics & Government: Do the People Rule? (2005)
Deblack, Thomas A. With Fire and Sword: Arkansas, 1861–1874 (2003)
Donovan, Timothy P. and Willard B. Gatewood Jr., eds. The Governors of Arkansas (1981)
Dougan, Michael B. Confederate Arkansas (1982),
Duvall, Leland. ed., Arkansas: Colony and State (1973)
Hamilton, Peter Joseph. The Reconstruction Period (1906), full length history of era; Dunning School approach; 570 pp; ch 13 on Arkansas
Hanson, Gerald T. and Carl H. Moneyhon. Historical Atlas of Arkansas (1992)
Key, V. O. Southern Politics (1949)
Kirk, John A., Redefining the Color Line: Black Activism in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1940–1970 (2002).
McMath, Sidney S. Promises Kept (2003)
Moore, Waddy W. ed., Arkansas in the Gilded Age, 1874–1900 (1976).
Peirce, Neal R. The Deep South States of America: People, Politics, and Power in the Seven Deep South States (1974).
Thompson, Brock. The Un-Natural State: Arkansas and the Queer South (2010)
Thompson, George H. Arkansas and Reconstruction (1976)
Whayne, Jeannie M. Arkansas Biography: A Collection of Notable Lives (2000)
White, Lonnie J. Politics on the Southwestern Frontier: Arkansas Territory, 1819–1836 (1964)
Williams, C. Fred. ed. A Documentary History Of Arkansas (2005)
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Arkansas
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External links
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External links
Arkansas.gov—Official State Website
Arkansas State Facts from USDA
Official State tourism website
Encyclopedia of Arkansas
Energy & Environmental Data for Arkansas
U.S. Census Bureau
2000 Census of Population and Housing for Arkansas, U.S. Census Bureau
USGS real-time, geographic, and other scientific resources of Arkansas
Arkansas Summer Camps
Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre
Arkansas State Code (the state statutes of Arkansas)
Arkansas State Databases—Annotated list of searchable databases produced by Arkansas state agencies and compiled by the Government Documents Roundtable of the American Library Association.
Category:1836 establishments in the United States
Category:Contiguous United States
Category:South Central United States
Category:Southern United States
Category:States and territories established in 1836
Category:States of the Confederate States of America
Category:States of the United States
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Arkansas
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Table of Content
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Short description, Etymology, History, Early history, Purchase and statehood, Civil War and Reconstruction, End of Reconstruction and late 19th century, Rise of the Jim Crow laws and early 20th century, Fall of segregation, Geography, Boundaries, Terrain, Hydrology, Flora and fauna, Climate, Cities and towns, Demographics, Population, Race and ethnicity, Religion, Economy, Industry and commerce, Transportation, Government, Executive, Legislative, Judicial, Federal, Politics, Military, Taxation, Health, Education, Media, Culture, Sports and recreation, Attractions, See also, Notes, References, Bibliography, Further reading, External links
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Atmosphere (disambiguation)
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Wiktionary
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An atmosphere is a gas layer around a celestial body.
Atmosphere may also refer to:
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Atmosphere (disambiguation)
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Science
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Science
Atmosphere (unit), a unit of pressure
Atmosphere of Earth
Extraterrestrial atmospheres
Stellar atmosphere
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Atmosphere (disambiguation)
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Arts, entertainment, and media
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Arts, entertainment, and media
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Atmosphere (disambiguation)
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Music
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Music
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Atmosphere (disambiguation)
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Groups
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Groups
Atmosphere (music group), an American hip-hop duo from Minnesota
Atmosphere (Polish band)
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Atmosphere (disambiguation)
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Albums
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Albums
Atmosphere (Atmosphere album) (1997)
Atmosphere (Eloy Fritsch album) (2003)
Atmosphere (Kaskade album) (2013), or the title song
Atmosphere (Sevenglory album) (2007)
Atmosphere, a 1969 album by Colours, produced by Dan Moore and Richard Delvy
Atmospheres (album) (2014)
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Atmosphere (disambiguation)
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Songs and orchestral pieces
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Songs and orchestral pieces
"Atmosphere" (Drax Project song) (2023)
"Atmosphere" (Joy Division song) (1980)
"Atmosphere" (Kaskade song) (2013)
"Atmosphere" (Fisher and Kita Alexander song) (2023)
"Atmosphere" (1975), from Let's Take It to the Stage by Funkadelic
"Atmosphere" (2001), from Singularity by Joe Morris
"Atmosphere" (1984), by Russ Abbot
Atmosphères (1961), an orchestral piece by György Ligeti
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Atmosphere (disambiguation)
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Periodicals
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Periodicals
Atmosphere (journal), an open access scientific journal
Atmosphere (magazine), the inflight magazine of Air Transat
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Atmosphere (disambiguation)
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Other uses in arts, entertainment, and media
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Other uses in arts, entertainment, and media
Atmospheres (TV series)
Atmospheric theatre, a type of cinema architecture
Atmosphere, another term for a film extra
Atmosphere (literature), a literary term referring to the mood surrounding a story
Atmosphere (service), a video on-demand service that provides content in a business-to-business capacity
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Atmosphere (disambiguation)
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Other uses
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Other uses
Atmosphere (architecture and spatial design)
Atmosphere (Kolkata), a residential superstructure in India
Adobe Atmosphere, a computer graphics platform
Atmosphere Visual Effects, a Canadian company
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Atmosphere (disambiguation)
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See also
|
See also
Atmosfear (disambiguation)
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Atmosphere (disambiguation)
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Table of Content
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Wiktionary, Science, Arts, entertainment, and media, Music, Groups, Albums, Songs and orchestral pieces, Periodicals, Other uses in arts, entertainment, and media, Other uses, See also
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Apus
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other uses
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Apus is a small constellation in the southern sky. It represents a bird-of-paradise, and its name means "without feet" in Greek because the bird-of-paradise was once wrongly believed to lack feet. First depicted on a celestial globe by Petrus Plancius in 1598, it was charted on a star atlas by Johann Bayer in his 1603 Uranometria. The French explorer and astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille charted and gave the brighter stars their Bayer designations in 1756.
The five brightest stars are all reddish in hue. Shading the others at apparent magnitude 3.8 is Alpha Apodis, an orange giant that has around 48 times the diameter and 928 times the luminosity of the Sun. Marginally fainter is Gamma Apodis, another aging giant star. Delta Apodis is a double star, the two components of which are 103 arcseconds apart and visible with the naked eye. Two star systems have been found to have planets.
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Apus
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History
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History
thumb|left|upright|Detail of Johann Bayer's 1603 Uranometria, showing the constellations Apus, Chamaeleon, Musca (as "Apis", the Bee), and Triangulum Australe, as well as the South celestial pole.|alt=A black line drawing on faded brownish paper depicting a stylized bird with no feet and a triangle superimposed on some stars
Apus was one of twelve constellations published by Petrus Plancius from the observations of Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman who had sailed on the first Dutch trading expedition, known as the Eerste Schipvaart, to the East Indies. It first appeared on a 35-cm (14 in) diameter celestial globe published in 1598 in Amsterdam by Plancius with Jodocus Hondius. De Houtman included it in his southern star catalogue in 1603 under the Dutch name De Paradijs Voghel, "The Bird of Paradise", and Plancius called the constellation Paradysvogel Apis Indica; the first word is Dutch for "bird of paradise". Apis (Latin for "bee") is assumed to have been a typographical error for avis ("bird").
After its introduction on Plancius's globe, the constellation's first known appearance in a celestial atlas was in German cartographer Johann Bayer's Uranometria of 1603. Bayer called it Apis Indica while fellow astronomers Johannes Kepler and his son-in-law Jakob Bartsch called it Apus or Avis Indica. The name Apus is derived from the Greek apous, meaning "without feet". This referred to the Western misconception that the bird-of-paradise had no feet, which arose because the only specimens available in the West had their feet and wings removed. Such specimens began to arrive in Europe in 1522, when the survivors of Ferdinand Magellan's expedition brought them home. The constellation later lost some of its tail when Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille used those stars to establish Octans in the 1750s.
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Apus
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Characteristics
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Characteristics
Covering 206.3 square degrees and hence 0.5002% of the sky, Apus ranks 67th 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 7°N. It is bordered by Ara, Triangulum Australe and Circinus to the north, Musca and Chamaeleon to the west, Octans to the south, and Pavo to the east. The three-letter abbreviation for the constellation, as adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 1922, is "Aps". The official constellation boundaries, as set by Belgian astronomer Eugène Delporte in 1930, are defined by a polygon of six segments (illustrated in infobox). In the equatorial coordinate system, the right ascension coordinates of these borders lie between and , while the declination coordinates are between −67.48° and −83.12°.
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Apus
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Features
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Features
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