One of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, it depicts a raven, a bird associated with stories about the god Apollo, perched on the back of Hydra the water snake.

The four brightest stars, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, and Beta Corvi, form a distinctive quadrilateral or cross-shape in the night sky.

The Babylonian constellation was sacred to Adad, the god of rain and storm; in the second Millennium BCE it would have risen just before the autumnal rainy season.

[1] These two constellations, along with the eagle Aquila and the fish Piscis Austrinus, were introduced to the Greeks around 500 BCE; they marked the winter and summer solstices respectively.

[2] Corvus and Crater also featured in the iconography of Mithraism, which is thought to have been of middle-eastern origin before spreading into Ancient Greece and Rome.

Coronis had been unfaithful to Apollo; when he learned this information from a pure white crow (or raven in some versions), he turned its feathers black in a fit of rage.

Apollo, realizing this was a lie, flung the crow (Corvus), cup (Crater), and snake (Hydra) into the sky.

He further punished the wayward bird by ensuring it would forever be thirsty, both in real life and in the heavens, where the Cup is just out of reach.

[4] In Chinese astronomy, the stars of Corvus are located within the Vermilion Bird of the South (南方朱雀, Nán Fāng Zhū Què).

[5] The four main stars depict a chariot, Zhen, which is the 28th and final lunar mansion; Alpha and Eta mark the linchpins for the wheels, and Zeta is Changsha, a coffin.

[6] In Indian astronomy, the five main stars of Corvus represent a hand or fist corresponding to the Hasta, the 13th nakshatra or lunar mansion.

[8] To Torres Strait Islanders, Corvus was the right hand (holding kupa fruit) of the huge constellation Tagai, a man fishing.

[14] The official constellation boundaries, as set by Belgian astronomer Eugène Delporte in 1930,[a] are defined by a polygon of six segments (illustrated in infobox).

[13][b] The German cartographer Johann Bayer used the Greek letters Alpha through Eta to label the most prominent stars in the constellation.

[c][13] Four principal stars, Delta, Gamma, Epsilon, and Beta Corvi, form a quadrilateral asterism known as "the "Spica's Spanker"[19] or "the Sail".

[23] Around 160+40−30 million years old,[25] it has largely exhausted its core hydrogen and begun expanding and cooling as it moves away from the main sequence.

A post T-tauri star, it is at least 650 AU distant from its brighter companion and takes at least 9400 years to complete an orbit.

[4] The raven's breast is marked by Beta Corvi (the proper name is Kraz[31][17]), a star of magnitude 2.7 located 146 ± 1 light-years from Earth.

[24] Roughly 206 million years old and 3.7 ± 1 times as massive as the Sun, it has exhausted its core hydrogen and expanded and cooled to a surface temperature of around 5,100 K and is now a yellow bright giant star of spectral type G5II.

[33] Bearing the proper name of Minkar and marking the raven's nostril is Epsilon Corvi, located some 318 ± 5 light-years from Earth.

[41] Located 420 ± 10 light-years distant,[24] it is a blue-white Be star of spectral type B8V, the presence of hydrogen emission lines in its spectrum indicating it has a circumstellar disc.

HR 4691 is itself double, composed of an ageing yellow-orange giant whose spectral type has been calculated at K0 or G3, and an F-type main-sequence star.

On 27 March 1974, the Mariner 10 mission detected emissions in the far ultraviolet from the planet (suggesting a satellite), but they were found to emanate from the star.

[46] Both are yellow-white main-sequence stars of spectral type F5V, though the primary has begun expanding and cooling as it nears the end of its time on the main sequence.

It is an unusual system in that its two stars are very close to each other yet have different surface temperatures, and hence thermal transfer is not taking place as expected.

[56] TT Corvi is a semiregular variable red giant of spectral type M3III and apparent magnitude 6.48 around 923 light years distant.

[36] TU Corvi is a Delta Scuti variable—a class of short period (six hours at most) pulsating stars that have been used as standard candles and as subjects to study astroseismology.

[71] A barred spiral galaxy, its distorted shape is probably due to a past collision, possibly with the nearby NGC 4027A.

[77] In 1624, German astronomer Jakob Bartsch equated the constellation Argo Navis with Noah's Ark, linking Corvus and Columba to the crow and dove that feature in the story in Genesis.

[78] In Action Comics #14 (January 2013), which was published 7 November 2012, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson appears in the story, in which he determines that Superman's home planet, Krypton, orbited the red dwarf LHS 2520 in the constellation Corvus, 27.1 light-years from Earth.