Sky & Telescope - May 2020 - 45

Under the Stars by Fred Schaaf

Fabled
Females
and a First
Transit
Constellations that invoke
mythological women populate
May's night sky.

A K IR A FUJII

I

f you're reading this column in late
March or early April, you can look in
the west-northwest after nightfall and
see Venus together with the Pleiades
- the Roman goddess of love with the
Seven Sisters of Greek mythology. To
their right, you can also view Algol, the
star of the monstrous Gorgon sister
Medusa, and to their left the cluster of
the Hyades sisters.
All these female heavenly characters are lost in the Sun's afterglow by
early May - except for Venus, which
twilight's glare consumes later in
the month. But what other female or
female-related constellations derived
from Greek and Roman myth are visible
in early April and in May? Answer: all
of them. And, with the exception of
Cassiopeia (which is at its lowest), all
of these constellations are visible near
their highest.
Females in the evening sky. Our
May Northern Hemisphere Map is just
one page-turn back from this column.
Elevated to its highest in the south
on that map is the only woman of the
zodiac: Virgo, the Virgin. It's also the
longest constellation of the zodiac and
the second largest of the 88 constellations in area. Very near the meridian at
this time is Virgo's brightest star, 1stmagnitude Spica.
But what other female characters
are represented in this sky? One is the
historic Queen Berenice II, queen of
Cyrene and Egypt, whose amber tresses

NORTHERN CROWN You can ﬁnd the striking curve of Corona Borealis east of Boötes,
which is dominated by the zero-magnitude
red giant Arcturus (at lower right). During
May, both constellations are well positioned
for evening viewing.

are part of the constellation Coma
Berenices (Berenice's Hair) and the big,
scattered Coma Star Cluster. Another
is Ariadne, the Cretan princess who
helped Athenian king Theseus escape
from the Labyrinth after he killed the
dreadful Minotaur, but whom Theseus
abandoned on an island. Ariadne was
rescued by the god Dionysius, who made
her his queen and wife. And when Ariadne died, Dionysius placed her crown
among the stars as the conspicuous
semicircle known as Corona Borealis,
the Northern Crown.
Interestingly, Coma Berenices and
Corona Borealis are located on either
side of Boötes, the Herdsman, home of
spring's brightest star, Arcturus. The
Coma constellation precedes Boötes
and lies directly north of the western
half of Virgo - the part that portrays
the head and upper body of the reclining virgin. Corona Borealis follows
Boötes and is found directly north
of the eastern end of Virgo, her feet.
The big Coma Star Cluster is about
5° in diameter, with at least ﬁve stars
brighter than magnitude 5.5 and about
a dozen brighter than 6.5. The somewhat wider semicircle of the Northern

Crown features a magnitude-2.2 gem:
Gemma, also known as Alphecca.
My ﬁrst transit. My previous two
Under the Stars columns described the
life-changing views I got of my ﬁrst total
solar eclipse of the Sun (March 7, 1970)
and my ﬁrst great comet (Bennett, at
its best in April 1970). Now I want to
mention a lesser but still exciting third
wonder from that spring 50 years ago:
May 9th's transit of Mercury. This and
my next transit (on November 10, 1973)
share one strange similarity. In both
early-morning events, Mercury had just
exited the Sun's disk on my telescope's
projection screen when a motorist
stopped on our quiet country road to
ask what I was observing. The driver
from the 1973 transit wondered if I was
observing - in broad daylight - the still
quite faint Comet Kohoutek. I wasn't.
All ﬁve of my Mercury transits
(including last November's) and both
of my Venus transits were amazing and gratifying visions of worlds
snatched from out of the stupendous
furnace of the Sun.
¢ FRED SCHAAF welcomes your letters
and comments at fschaaf@aol.com.
s k y a n d t e l e s c o p e . o r g * M AY 2 0 2 0

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Sky & Telescope - May 2020

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