On a warm summer’s evening rich with brilliant stars, dim Lepus, the Hare, shyly crouches near Orion, hoping to be overlooked by the mighty hunter. Among the stars used to place the Hare’s image in the sky, four of the faintest mark his ears as seen on our image of Lepus from Johann Bayer’s unprecedented 1603 atlas, Uranometria. They are ι, κ, λ and ν, and around them lie the deep sky wonders for this month’s sky tour. As lagomorph lovers are fond of saying, it’s all about the ears.
The jumping-off point for our foray is Kappa (κ) Leporis, which itself is worth a look along the way. Kappa is a double system composed of two white stars. Their magnitude difference and close quarters beg high magnification for a…