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Mama Cass and Her Beautiful Daughter
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Once there was a great king and queen of Ethiopia called Cepheus and Cassiopeia. They had a beautiful daughter named Andromeda.
Now Mama Cass was one proud parent and one fine day she blurted out that her daughter was one beautiful young lady, even more beautiful than the Nereids, those sea nymphs of lore. Bad move.
The offended Nereid went and told old Poseidon, the god of the oceans, who then proceeded to flood the whole kingdom of Cepheus and Cassiopeia, and worse, send a sea monster to bat cleanup. It was quickly decided --- without asking Andromeda apparently --- that Andromeda herself should be sacrificed to the monster to make things all better. Thanks, Mom.
This is when the famous and rugged Perseus flew in and saved the day waving the hideous head of Medusa, herself another tale of beauty gone bad.
Somehow all the actors in this passion play got their own constellation, and in the same part of the skies in the north. But here we focus specifically on Cassiopeia (CAS), the most easily recognized of the bunch.
In the northern skies, on the opposite side of the North Star as the Big Dipper you have undoubtedly seen the Big W (or Big Jagged Number 3 as it looks at this time of the year). That is the reclining Cassiopeia, relaxing on her throne.
Cassiopeia is a great constellation to show you how some stars are named.
There are the common names in CAS, to be sure, like Schedar and Ruchbah and Segin. But often the stars in constellations are named from brightest to dimmest by using the Greek alphabet. The brightest one is the alpha star, then beta, then gamma, etc.
You can impress your friends and family by going out tonight and rattling off the Greek designations for the Big Five stars of Cassiopeia. Just remember BAG-DE; beta, alpha, gamma, delta, and epsilon. At the brighter end of CAS, the top of the 3, is beta Cassiopeia; then alpha Cassiopeia (the brightest star); then gamma, delta, and dimmer epsilon.
Regular readers here will recall that the Greeks and Romans weren't the only ones to have myths and stories and then immortalize them in the skies. Many ethnic groups have their own traditions which reflect their unique culture.
For example the Lapps, a people of northern Scandinavia, who weren't too overly influenced by the Greeks, saw in CAS a moose's antler.
When CAS is shaped as an M, during our winter nights, a group of people in northern Siberia called the Chukchee saw five roaming reindeer.
Some Arab folks in the Middle East placed there the humped back of a camel, a very special and useful beast of burden of their region. The rest of the camel extends down into what we know as Andromeda and Perseus.
Go all the way down into the Marshall Islands of the South Pacific and we see another influential animal given a place of reverence here. To the Marshallese the great W formed the tail fin of a monstrous porpoise. Their starry mammal extends down to the east from Cassiopeia through Andromeda and tiny Triangulum all the way to the porpoise's mouth located at the two brightest stars in Aries. That's nearly 40 degrees across the sky, which is more than both hands fully spanned at arm's length. That's one major mammal.
It's a fascinating learning experience to see how different people see the skies in different ways, reserving there special places for the influential and holy things in their lives.
Questions or suggestions? Write Mark Ritter here.
Posted by Administrator at 2002.09.28 02:28 PM | Comments (0)
