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Far from any lights, the sky fills with stars. Gold lines: the Southern Pointers. Drawn from real star positions; bigger dots are brighter stars. See it from a city or the suburbs in the app.

✨ Constellation

Centaurus

The Centaur, holding the closest stars to our Sun.

Name means: The Centaur, half human and half horse
Best seen: May evenings
Where to see it: The southern half of Earth, and low in the sky from the northern tropics
Brightest star: Alpha Centauri
Stars in the pattern: 16

Shapes to look for

The Southern Pointers. Follow the line from Alpha Centauri through Hadar and it leads you to the Southern Cross.

Did you know?

Alpha Centauri, its brightest point, is really three stars, and they are the closest stars to the Sun.
Proxima Centauri b, the nearest known planet beyond our solar system, circles one of them.

In this part of the sky

Alpha Centauri The closest star system to the Sun.

Proxima Centauri b The closest known planet outside our solar system.

Omega Centauri The biggest and brightest globular cluster in the sky, with about 10 million stars.

More NASA photos of CentaurusStraight from NASA’s image library, in the app

Explore more

All of night sky

Orion The Hunter, with three bright stars in a row for his belt. Ursa Major The Great Bear, home of the Big Dipper. Ursa Minor The Little Bear, with Polaris at the tip of its tail. Cassiopeia A bright W of five stars, named after a boastful queen. Scorpius The Scorpion, with red Antares at its heart. Leo The Lion, whose head is a backwards question mark of stars.

Facts: Star patterns: d3-celestial (IAU figures, Hipparcos star data). Stories: traditional Greek and Roman myths. Open Centaurus in the app.