Tucana
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"den Indiaenschen Exster, op Indies Lang ghenaemt" (the Indian Magpie, known as "Lang" in the Indies) was the original Dutch name of the constellation of the bird that is now called "Toucan" (Tucana, Tuc). The constellation was invented by Pieter Dircksz Keyser and Frederik de Houtman on their journey to Indonesia in 1595/6.
Invention & Transformation
The southern star catalog by de Houtman[1] and Keyser was published by de Houtman in 1603 as an appendix to a dictionary of the Malaysian (and other) language(s). This star catalog was written in Dutch (with later translations to French[2], English[3][4] and Spanish[5]). This printed catalogue of 1603 was made from observations collected by De Houtman on his second voyage (1598-1602) and during the two-year period when he was held as a hostage by the Sultan of Aceh on Northern Sumatra. At that time, de Houtman worked for W.J. Blaeu, a Plancius competitor, who used the data on his celestial globe of 1603.
Before the publication of his star catalogue, de Houtman had shared the data from the first voyage (1595/6) with Petrus Plancius who had actually commissioned this work. Plancius used the data collected by Pieter Dircksz Keyser on the exploration "Eerste Schipvaart" ('de eerste schipvaart op Oost-Indie'); De Houtman may have assisted in making these observations, and as Keyser was buried on Java, de Houtman may also have been the person who personally communicated Keyser’s data to Plancius in 1597, but this is nowhere explicitly stated, it is just assumed because Plancius had worked with this material, and his celestial globe of 1598 already displayed paintings of the newly invented constellations in the south. The images had the labels "Indian" and "Toucan" left and right of the bird, while the left label ("Indian") also referred to the male figure northwest of it. Petrus Plancius' work and/or its copies by W. J. Blaeu served as source for Bayer's Uranometria (1603). Bayer's map of the south pole also displays the image with the label "Toucan" and an extraordinarily long beak.
Species of this bird
The additional phrase in de Houtman's catalog, mentioning that the bird was named "Lang" is occasionally misinterpreted to be the cause for this depiction, implying that "Lang" in Dutch means "long" and refers to the beak. In de Houtman's days the Dutch word for long was usually spelled as "lanck", so "Lang" is actually the name of the bird in the Malay language (cf. Maass 1926)[6]. According to the Malay-English Dictionary (1901), it is the a generic term for birds of prey such as hawks, kites, falcons and eagles.
Possible origins of the interpretation of a Toucan
Toucans are not home to the East Indies and Malaysia. It has been suggested that images like this lead to the new interpretation of the constellation as a Toucan, although de Houtman certainly did not describe a toucan but an hornbill (cf. Ridpath).[7]
Ridpath suggests that the inventor of this constellation was actually Pieter Keyser who had not survived the expedition to the East Indies but had previously visited South America. Hoffmann (2021, 108) suggests Plancius and de Houtman as also possible because baroque ‘wunderkamers’ could certainly have played a mediating role here. Rob van Gent here adds that is not necessary that Keyser, de Houtman or Plancius actually saw a live (or dead) toucan as they are bound to descriptions and depictions of the bird in 16th-century travel literature: in particular Plancius would surely have been familiar with these.
Versions
Plancius' Toucan (1598)
Bayer's Toucan (1603)
Doppelmayr's Toucan (1742)
Lacaille's Toucan (1756)
Bode's Toucan (1772)
Fortin's Toucan (1775-1795)
Goldbach's Toucan (1799) looks like a sparrow
Modern Star Name
"Exster" is proposed as name for the main star of the modern IAU-constellation of Tucana (alf Tuc).
"Lang" is proposed as name for beta Tuc.
(or vice versa?)
References
- Ian Ridpath, Star Tales. website
- ↑ Frederik de Houtman (1603) Star Catalogue concerning the Indian Magpie
- ↑ Houtman, F. and Marre, A., “Catalogue des étoiles circumpolaires australes observées dans l'Ile de Sumatra”, Bulletin sciences mathématiques et astronomiques, vol. 1, pp. 336–352, 1881. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1881BSMA....5..336H/abstract
- ↑ Knobel, E. B., “On Frederick de Houtman's catalogue of southern stars, and the origin of the southern constellations”, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, vol. 77, OUP, pp. 414–432, 1917. doi:10.1093/mnras/77.5.414. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1917MNRAS..77..414K/abstract
- ↑ Knobel, E. B., “Note on the paper 'On Frederick de Houtman's catalogue of southern stars, and the origin of the southern constellations' ", Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, vol. 77, OUP, p. 580, 1917. doi:10.1093/mnras/77.8.580. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1917MNRAS..77..580K/abstract
- ↑ Miguel Selga (1918) Revista de la Sociedad Astronómica de España y América
- ↑ Alfred Maass, ``Sternkunde und Sterndeuterei im malaiischen Archipel'', Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, vol. 64 (1924), pp. 1-172 & 347-459, with a "Nachtrag", vol. 66 (1926), pp. 618-670.
- ↑ Smith, Paul J. (2007). On Toucans And Hornbills: Readings In Early Modern Ornithology From Belon To Buffon. In: Early Modern Zoology: The Construction of Animals in Science, Literature and the Visual Arts (2 vols.), 75–119, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004131880.i-657.24
