Tucana is a constellation of stars in the southern sky, named after the toucan, aSouth American bird. It is one of twelve constellations conceived in the late sixteenth century byPetrus Plancius from the observations ofPieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman. It first appeared on a 1598 celestial globe by Plancius and Jodocus Hondius in Amsterdam and was depicted inJohann Bayer's star atlas Uranometria of 1603. French explorer and astronomerNicolas Louis de Lacaille gave its starsBayer designations in 1756. Tucana is not a prominent constellation as all of its stars are third magnitude or fainter; the brightest isAlpha Tucanae with an apparent visual magnitude of 2.87. Beta Tucanae is a star system with six member stars, while Kappais a quadruple system. Five star systems have been found to have exoplanets to date. The constellation contains most of the Small Magellanic Cloud, along with 47 Tucanae(pictured), one of the brightest globular clusters in the sky. The constellations Tucana, Grus, Phoenix and Pavo are collectively known as the "Southern Birds".
