Crux few bright stars of importance lie between Crux and the pole itself, although the constellation Musca is fairly easily recognised immediately beneath Crux. A technique used in the field is to clench one's right fist and to view the cross, aligning the first knuckle with the axis of the cross. The tip of the thumb will indicate south. Argentine gauchos are well known for using it for night orientation in the vast Pampas and Patagonic regions. Within the constellation's borders, there are 49 stars brighter than or equal to apparent magnitude 6.5. The four main stars that form the asterism
Crux an Italian navigator who from 1515–1517 sailed to China and the East Indies in an expedition sponsored by King Manuel I. In 1516, Corsali wrote a letter to the monarch describing his observations of the southern sky, which included a rather crude map of the stars around the south celestial pole including the Southern Cross and the two Magellanic Clouds seen in an external orientation, as on a globe. Emery Molyneux and Petrus Plancius have also been cited as the first uranographers to distinguish Crux as a separate constellation; their representations date from 1592, the former depicting it on his