Paper Archive

Yes, it's a real constellation.

Chamaeleon sits in the deep southern sky, so close to the south celestial pole that it never rises over New York; I named this archive after a piece of sky I cannot see from here.

It entered the charts in 1597, when the cartographer Petrus Plancius drew twelve new southern constellations onto his celestial globe from the observations of the Dutch navigators Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman. The engraver, Jodocus Hondius, gave the chameleon its tongue out, aimed at Musca, the fly constellation next door. The catch has been frozen mid-air for four centuries.