Lynx is a faint northern constellation occupying the seemingly empty stretch of sky between Ursa Major and Auriga. It was created by Polish astronomer Johannes Hevelius in the late 17th century, unlike many familiar constellations whose origins stretch back thousands of years. He formed the constellation from just 19 faint stars, including several that Ptolemy had catalogued more than 1,500 years earlier as stars lying outside the figure of Ursa Major.
You Need the Eyes of a Lynx to See It
Lynx is so faint that its name is essentially an eyesight test. Hevelius thought its scattered stars were so difficult to see that an observer would need the eyes of a lynx to make them out — and the name stuck.
How to Find Lynx in the Night Sky
Finding Lynx is easier than seeing it. The constellation occupies the stretch of sky between two much more recognizable neighbors, Ursa Major and Auriga, with Camelopardalis to the north and Gemini to the southwest. Once you’ve found the right area, look for a long, uneven chain of faint stars with no obvious shape resembling a lynx.
Lynx covers 545 square degrees, making it the 28th-largest constellation in the sky. From mid-northern latitudes, it’s best seen on winter and early-spring evenings, preferably under dark skies.
No Stars Above 4th Magnitude
Lynx has no stars brighter than fourth magnitude, with even its brightest, Alpha Lyncis, reaching only magnitude 3.14.
- Alpha Lyncis — the constellation’s brightest star is an orange giant about 220 light-years away. After leaving the main sequence, it expanded to around 58 times the Sun’s radius and now shines more than 600 times brighter. Despite being Lynx’s brightest star, it has no traditional proper name and was one of the “unformed” stars catalogued by Ptolemy long before Lynx existed.
- 38 Lyncis — the constellation’s second-brightest star lies around 125 light-years away and shines at magnitude 3.82. Its main component is a blue-white A-type star around 30 times more luminous than the Sun. Through a moderate telescope, it splits into a close double: a bright blue-white star and a fainter companion traditionally described as lilac or blue-white, which is itself a close binary.
- Alsciaukat (31 Lyncis) — an orange giant around 380 light-years away that varies slightly around magnitude 4.25. Its traditional Arabic name means “the thorn” and predates Lynx itself: Alsciaukat was another of the stars catalogued by Ptolemy long before Hevelius created the constellation.
- 12 Lyncis — a triple-star system around 230 light-years away that appears as a single magnitude 4.9 point to the naked eye. Through a moderate telescope, however, it separates into three stars, two of which form a particularly close pair.
10 Ursae Majoris Is Actually in Lynx
Despite its name, 10 Ursae Majoris belongs to Lynx, not Ursa Major. The misleading name is an old Flamsteed designation, dating from long before the modern constellation boundaries were fixed in 1930. When those boundaries placed the star inside Lynx, its centuries-old designation was simply retained. 10 Ursae Majoris is a binary system about 52 light-years away that shines at around magnitude 4.0. Its yellow-white primary and smaller, cooler companion orbit each other roughly every 21 years, separated by an average distance of about 11 times the Earth-Sun distance.
Home to an Intergalactic Wanderer and a Supernova Factory
NGC 2419 is known as the Intergalactic Wanderer — although it isn’t actually intergalactic. This globular cluster lies about 300,000 light-years away, so far into the Milky Way’s outer halo that astronomers once thought it might wander independently through intergalactic space. We now know that it is gravitationally associated with our galaxy.
Lynx is also home to NGC 2770, nicknamed the Supernova Factory after producing three Type Ib supernovae in less than a decade. One, SN 2008D, was discovered in extraordinary circumstances: NASA’s Swift satellite was already observing another supernova in the galaxy when it detected an X-ray burst from the beginning of the new explosion, allowing astronomers to observe a supernova almost from the moment it began.
Lynx Lets Us See the Universe 12 Billion Years Ago
The Lynx Arc is an enormous star-forming region so distant that its light has taken around 12 billion years to reach Earth. We therefore see it as it looked when the universe was less than 2 billion years old.
What we see is a remarkable burst of early star formation. The Lynx Arc contains an estimated one million hot young stars, some with surface temperatures around 80,000°C. We can study something so distant because a massive galaxy cluster between us and the Lynx Arc bends and magnifies its light, acting as a natural gravitational lens. The Lynx Arc is estimated to shine about one million times more brightly than the Orion Nebula.