Volans

Volans is a constellation in the southern sky. It represents a flying fish; its name is a shortened form of its original name, Piscis Volans. Volans was one of twelve constellations created by Petrus Plancius from the observations of Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman and it first appeared on a 35-cm diameter celestial globe published in 1597 (or 1598) in Amsterdam by Plancius with Jodocus Hondius. The first depiction of this constellation in a celestial atlas was in Johann Bayer's Uranometria of 1603.

Volans has several deep-sky objects within its borders. The Lindsay-Shapley ring, also categorized as AM0644-741, is a ring galaxy located 300 million light-years from Earth. Named for its discoverers, the Lindsay-Shapley ring was found near the Large Magellanic Cloud in 1960. Like the Cartwheel Galaxy in Sculptor, the unusual shape of this galaxy results from a collision many millions of years ago. The blue ring, 150,000 light-years in diameter, was formed when a shock wave from the collision created a ring of hot blue stars; the yellow core is an amalgamation of the progenitors' cores. NGC 2442, an intermediate-spiral galaxy, is also located in this constellation, with a distance of 50 million light-years from Earth.

Etymology
Volans, a fish flying, evokes the idea of a thing in a foreign environment; "a fish out of water" is a metaphor for something being out of its element; a stranger, exile, foreign. The Mediterranean flying fish is called Exocoetus exiliens, from Latin exilium, exsilium,'exile'. Volans is the present participle of volare, to fly, and comes from the Indo-European root *gwel- 'To fly; a wing'. Derivatives: volant (having wings), volatile (quickly evaporating; easily changing, fickle), vole2 (taking of all card tricks in card games), volitant (fly about, move swiftly), volley (a flight of missiles).

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