Early 3rd century BC: Aratus's astronomical poem Phainomena mentions faint stars where Columba is now but does not fit any name or figure to them.
2nd century AD: Ptolemy listed 48 constellations in the Almagest but did not mention Columba.
c. 150–215 AD: Clement of Alexandria wrote in his Logos Paidogogos"Αἱ δὲ σφραγῖδες ἡμῖν ἔστων πελειὰς ἢ ἰχθὺς ἢ ναῦς οὐριοδρομοῦσα ἢ λύρα μουσική, ᾗ κέχρηται Πολυκράτης, ἢ ἄγκυρα ναυτική,", with no mention of stars or astronomy.
1592 AD: Petrus Plancius first depicted Columba on the small celestial planispheres of his large wall map to differentiate the 'unformed stars' of the large constellation Canis Major. Columba is also shown on his smaller world map of 1594 and on early Dutch celestial globes. Plancius named the constellation Columba Noachi, referring to the dove that gave Noah the information that the Great Flood was receding. This name is found on early 17th-century celestial globes and star atlases.
Coelum Astronomico-Poeticum, including an inaccurate Latin translation of the above text of Clement of Alexandria: it mistranslated "ναῦς οὐριοδρομοῦσα" as Latin "Navis coelestis cursu in coelum tendens", perhaps misunderstanding "οὐριο-" as "up in the air or sky" by analogy with οὐρανός = "sky".
Catalogus Stellarum Australium from his observations on St. Helena.
1679: Augustin Royer published a star atlas that showed Columba as a constellation.
c.1690: Hevelius's Prodromus Astronomiae showed Columba but did not list it as a constellation.
1712 and 1725 : Flamsteed's work
Historia Coelestis Britannica showed Columba but did not list it as a constellation.
1757 or 1763: Lacaille listed Columba as a constellation and catalogued its stars.
1889: Richard H. Allen, misled by Caesius's mistranslation, wrote that the Columba asterism may have been invented in Roman/Greek times, but with a footnote saying that it may have been another star group.
2001: Ridpath and Tirion wrote that Columba may also represent the dove released by Jason and the Argonauts at the Black Sea's mouth; it helped them navigate the dangerous Symplegades.
2007: The author P.K. Chen wrote that, given the mythological linkage of a dove with Jason and the Argonauts, and the celestial location of Columba over Puppis, Columba may have an ancient history although Ptolemy omits it.
Columba is rather inconspicuous, the brightest star, Alpha Columbae, being only of magnitude 2.7. This, a blue-white star, has a pre-Bayer, traditional, Arabic namePhact and is 268 light-years from Earth. The only other named star is Beta Columbae, which has the alike-status name Wazn. It is an orange-hued giant star of magnitude 3.1, 87 light-years away. The constellation contains the runaway starμ Columbae, which was probably expelled from the ι Orionis system. ExoplanetNGTS-1b and its star NGTS-1 are in Columba.
a globular cluster in Columba appears at 7th magnitude in a far part of our galaxy as is 39,000 light-years away - it is resolvable south of at greatest latitude +40°N in medium-sized amateur telescopes.
