Musca
The pattern of the brightest stars resembles that of Ursa Minor, in that the stars form a pattern reminiscent of a bowl with a handle. Lying south-southeast of Acrux in neighbouring Crux is Alpha Muscae. It is the brightest star in the constellation with an apparent magnitude of 2.7. Lying around 310 light-years away, it is a blue-white star of spectral type B2IV-V that is around 4520 times as luminous and 8 times as massive as the Sun. The star is a Beta Cephei variable with about 4.7 times the Sun's diameter, and pulsates every 2.2 hours, varying by 1% in brightness. A nearby star of magnitude 13 may or may not be a companion star. Marking the fly's tail is Gamma Muscae, a blue-white star of spectral type B5V that varies between magnitudes 3.84 and 3.86 over a period of 2.7 days. It is a variable of a different type, classed as a slowly pulsating B star, a type of variable. It is around five times as massive as our Sun.
Epsilon Muscae
Epsilon Muscae, Latinized as ε Muscae, is a red giant star of spectral type M5III in the constellation Musca. Originally a main-sequence star of around 1.5 to 2 solar masses, it has now expanded to 130 times the Sun's diameter and 1800 to 2300 its luminosity. It is a semiregular variable, varying in eight distinct periods ranging from a month to over half a year in length, with the largest amplitude being of almost half a magnitude from the mean of 4.06. It is located around 300 light-years distant, the same distance as the Lower Centaurus Crux subgroup of the Scorpius–Centaurus Association, although it is moving much faster at around 100 km/s and does not share a common origin.