Featured Constellations |
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For May, we feature two constellations --
Leo and Virgo.
LEO the lion is one of the few constellations that actually LOOKS like something, and by wonderful good fortune, it looks like a lion, resting prone on its belly. In other words, it's just 'lion' there. Making this pattern easy to spot on spring evenings is the presence of one first-magnitude star, Regulus, marking the lion's heart, and a host of other bright stars: two second magnitude stars and three of the third. The pattern of stars is of course an accident, some of them being nearer of farther from us - from another angle, you'd see a totally different shape. |
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But from Earth, these stars have been "lionized" for
thousands of years; the Babylonians and Egyptians both
drew a lion from them. The Greeks saw this lion as the
Nemean Lion, a beast whose skin was impervious to
weapons - Hercules slayed the lion by choking it to
death, guaranteeing himself and the lion a place among
the stars, but definitely removing him from the ASPCA
mailing list. More recent attempts to draw this
constellation as Leonardo DiCaprio here have thankfully
failed, and so the king of the African plains is secure
for now.
As one of the "zodiac" constellations, Leo plays host to
the sun, which passes in front of these stars between
August 9th and September 15th. It also contains
planets, sometimes; Mercury, Venus, and Mars in the fall
of 2000, for example. The moon visits once a month, of
course. The star Regulus is the closest to the path of
the planets in the sky (the "ecliptic") of all the first
magnitude stars - just half a degree, and some remember
this by saying that Regulus is "regularly" making close
passes or even passing behind the planets and moon.
Venus is a bit over one degree north on August 5, and
Mars does a similar pass on September 15. Closer passes
are rare, and sadly the much bigger moon is in a tilted
orbit and misses Regulus by a good margin for several
years yet.
Like Leo, Virgo is a zodiac constellation, and
the sun is seen against these stars between September 16
to October 30, after it moves eastward from Leo. Virgo
is populated by one first magnitude star, Spica, and
five of the third magnitude - a goodly sprinkle that
allows even city dwellers to make out the pattern of the
Virgin with a little patience and practice.
Virgo, being among the Zodiac constellations, has always
been well known, and the Egyptians logged these stars
onto the ancient Denderah and Thebes charts; there is
speculation that Virgo was seen as Isis to the
Egyptians, a goddess who gave birth to the Milky Way by
dropping kernels of corn from a ear she carried. This
agricultural theme is also applied by the Greeks; Virgo
is drawn today as a maiden carrying a sheaf of wheat,
marked by Spica.
The most famous legends about Virgo cast her as
Persephone, daughter of god boss Zeus, who is kidnapped
by Pluto and taken to the underworld...these animated
dogs clearly have a secret life we don't see in the
cartoons. Anyway, there was a custody fight - no
pre-nuptial agreement, obviously - and Zeus arranged
that Persephone would spend six months in the living
world (our sunny months) and six down below watching
cartoons while the world above shivered through winter.
While the Greeks explained the seasons by saying that
Persephone's mom, Demeter (goddess of the harvest, hence
the grain Virgo carries) is in a better moon when that
son in law lets the girl loose, the author suspects the
Greeks were really hoping to drum up more cash by having
a winter Olympics.
To find out about celestial objects you can find in our
featured constellations, go to Deep
Sky Objects.
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