Featured Constellations |
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Pegasus is the winged horse from mythology -
but in the sky, it is best seen as a square of
second magnitude stars just about straight up
on fall nights. Note that one star, Alpheratz,
is technically in the neighboring Andromeda -
Algenib, Markab, and Scheat (an arabic word
that sounds very unfortunately like a southern
soldier shooting himself in the foot) are
proper Pegasus stars. Scheat, note, is a red
star, unlike the others, and really stands out.
To the west of the sqaure, the star Enif marks
the horse's nose (earning the star cluster M15
nearby the irreverant nick name of "the
boogers"). The mane curves around the the
sqaure itself, marking the body. Two fainter
strings of stars to the northwest are the
forelimbs - no stars seem to mark the
afterlimbs or those remarkable wings...so we
have basically a half horse, and for nothern
hemisphere observers, an upside down one to
boot. If you ask me, Pegasus looks more like a
television set - making the mane the power
cord, and Enif the plug in the wall. The square
is thus a nice screen. What's on tonight?
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Andromeda fits nicely in the "TV" scheme, looking for all the word like the old "rabbit ears" antennae of the 1970s. In mythology, this is the hapless daughter of nearby Cassiopeia and Cepheus, who offer Andy up as a tasty sacrifice to drive away the also nearby Cetus the sea monster from their coast. Sounds an awful lot like the plot of "Jaws" to me, but I didn't write this script. Perseus (again, right next door in the sky) rides in on Pegasus to rescue her at the last moment. Andromeda steals one square star from Pegasus, and has two more bright ones further east: Mirach and Almach, both decidedly amber in color. In a dark sky, you'll notice the soft oval glow of the Great Andromeda Galaxy just north of Mirach (more on that in our deep space objects section, next).
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