One of the 48 constellations listed by the second-century astronomer Ptolemy, it depicts a cup that has been associated with the god Apollo and is perched on the back of Hydra the water snake.

A few notable galaxies, including Crater 2 and NGC 3981, and a famous quasar lie within the borders of the constellation.

British scientist John H. Rogers observed that the adjoining constellation Hydra signified Ningishzida, the god of the underworld in the Babylonian compendium MUL.APIN.

He proposed that Corvus and Crater (along with the water snake Hydra) were death symbols and marked the gate to the underworld.

[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.

[3] Crater is identified with a story from Greek mythology in which a crow or raven serves Apollo, and is sent to fetch water, but it delays its journey as it finds some figs and waits for them to ripen before eating them.

Later, Mastusius killed Demiphon's daughters and tricked the ruler in drinking a cup containing a mixture of their blood and wine.

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

[9] It is bordered by Leo and Virgo to the north, Corvus to the east, Hydra to the south and west, and Sextans to the northwest.

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

[9][a] The German cartographer Johann Bayer used the Greek letters alpha through lambda to label the most prominent stars in the constellation.

[41] Located near Alkes is the red-hued R Crateris,[13] a semiregular variable star of type SRb and a spectral classification of M7.

The white dwarf strips matter off its companion, forming an accretion disk which periodically ignites and erupts.

It is a nearby star system located about 42.9 ± 1.0 light-years from the Sun,[45] and is a member of the Ursa Major Moving Group.

Variations in its brightness in visible and infrared spectra suggest it has some form of atmospheric cloud cover.

Analysis of its radial velocity revealed it has a planet with a minimum mass 68% that of Jupiter, which takes 498.9 ± 1.0 days to complete an orbit.

In 2012, a long-period ( 4951+607−465 days) planet companion, at least 6.8 times as massive as Jupiter, was discovered by radial velocity method.

Its orbit was calculated to be highly eccentric, swinging out to 10.6 astronomical units away from its star, and hence a candidate for direct imaging.

[51] BD-10°3166 is a metallic orange main sequence star of spectral type K3.0V, 268 ± 10 light-years distant from the Sun.

[52] It was found to have a hot Jupiter-type planet that has a minimum mass of 48% of Jupiter's, and takes only 3.49 days to complete an orbit.