Corvus, the crow, used to have silvery white feathers, and a sweet, musical song. He was the favourite bird of Apollo, the Sun god. One day, Apollo gave the crow a cup, and asked him to fetch some water. On his way to the stream, the crow saw a fig tree, and stopped to eat some figs. But the figs weren't quite ripe, so the crow waited for the figs to ripen, neglecting his instructions from Apollo. When he finally returned with the water, he was so late, he made up a story about a fearsome snake that wouldn't let him near the water for a long time. Apollo, being a god, saw through the lie at once, and punished the crow by turning it black, taking away its sweet voice, and putting it into the heavens, right beside the most fearsome snake of all, Hydra, the water snake, who had challenged the mighty Hercules. He put the cup (crater) right beside him, to forever remind him why he was being punished. Now for eternity, the crow is bent over the giant snake, his long pointed bill pointed down, perpetually stabbing at the snake that caused his doom.

Although Corvus is a small constellation, it does contain some fascinating deep sky objects. The most spectacular is a pair of galaxies (ngc 4038-4039), whose mutual gravitational attraction has pulled them together in a wild, passionate dance that's been going on for 100 million years, as they slowly merge, and become one. They are known as the Antennae galaxies, or the Ring Tail galaxies, and are about 63 million light years from Earth.

Just under the Antennae galaxies is NGC 4027, a spiral galaxy with an unusually long spiral arm, 68 million light years away.



In the middle of the constellation is the bright planetary nebula NGC 4361, 2,500 light years from Earth.

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