Its non-specific (single-word) name, already in limited use, was preferred by John Herschel then welcomed by the astronomic community which officially accepted this.

[a][7] Lacaille depicted Antlia as a single-cylinder vacuum pump used in Papin's initial experiments, while German astronomer Johann Bode chose the more advanced double-cylinder version.

English astronomer John Herschel proposed shrinking the name to one word in 1844, noting that Lacaille himself had abbreviated his constellations thus on occasion.

[11][12] Ridpath reports that due to their faintness, the stars of Antlia did not make up part of the classical depiction of Argo Navis.

[6] Furthermore, Epsilon, Eta, and Theta Antliae were incorporated into the celestial temple, which also contained stars from modern Pyxis.

[14][b] Hydra the sea snake runs along the length of its northern border, while Pyxis the compass, Vela the sails, and Centaurus the centaur line it to the west, south and east respectively.

[18] Alpha is an orange giant of spectral type K4III that is a suspected variable star, ranging between apparent magnitudes 4.22 and 4.29.

[31] Theta Antliae is likewise double, most likely composed of an A-type main sequence star and a yellow giant.

[34] S Antliae is an eclipsing binary star system that varies in apparent magnitude from 6.27 to 6.83 over a period of 15.6 hours.

[35] The system is classed as a W Ursae Majoris variable—the primary is hotter than the secondary and the drop in magnitude is caused by the latter passing in front of the former.

[36] The two stars have similar luminosity and spectral type as they have a common envelope and share stellar material.

[36] T Antliae is a yellow-white supergiant of spectral type F6Iab and Classical Cepheid variable ranging between magnitude 8.88 and 9.82 over 5.9 days.

[41] HR 4049, also known as AG Antliae, is an unusual hot variable ageing star of spectral type B9.5Ib-II.

About as massive as Saturn, the planet orbits its star with a period of 143 days at a mean distance of 0.477 AU.

Though nondescript in most amateur telescopes, it presents bright clusters of young stars and many dark dust lanes in photographs.

[56] The cluster's distance from earth is 40.5 to 40.9 Mpc (132.1 to 133.4 Mly)[57] Located in the southeastern corner of the constellation, it boasts the giant elliptical galaxies NGC 3268 and NGC 3258 as the main members of a southern and northern subgroup respectively, and contains around 234 galaxies in total.