Aries

…When you just stare into the night sky, it isn’t so easy to spot him ? a stubborn, uncompromising ram, one who will tolerate no competition. He is relaxing right over there, not far from the Square of Pegasus. His horned head adorned with one of the brightest stars in the zodiacal constellations is turned towards the Pleiades, as if the stellar ram is feasting his eyes on the bright celestial nymphs’ twinkling.

Aries is the 39th largest constellation in the sky, covering an area of 441 square degrees. It lies in the first quadrant of the Northern hemisphere and is surrounded by five constellations: Taurus to the east, Pisces to the West, Perseus to the northwest, Triangulum to the north, and Cetus to the south.

It is one of the oldest constellations identified in the night sky. The first mentions of it were found on some boundary stones dated back to between 1350 and 1000 B.C. As early as in the Babylonian times, people believed that Aries was the last station in the Sun’s way. It is indeed one of the twelve constellations of the Zodiac, lying along the path the Sun travels in the sky during the year.

Egyptians called it the «Indicator of the Reborn Sun», because the constellation was the location of the vernal equinox in those times. It is the «First Point of Aries», where the Sun crosses the celestial equator’s imaginary line. The time of crossing signals the beginning of the spring season in the Northern hemisphere. However, because of the precession, or the Earth's slow wobble, this point is now in Pisces.

Another title related to Aries is the Lord of the Head. That was how the Arabs called it, whose name for the constellation was Al Hamal. It served as the basis of the formal name for its alpha star, Hamal.

Aries is one of the 48 Greek constellations listed by Claudius Ptolemy in his Almagest. The modern boundaries of the constellation were defined in 1920 by Belgian astronomer Eugene Delporte, and the International Astronomical Union recognized and formalized them in 1928.

As for the figure of a ram in the sky, it doesn’t come as unexpected that it appeared there. They say the first astronomers on the earth were shepherds who spent nights in the steppes, admired the starry sky, and looked for familiar outlines among the stars. A male sheep (ram) heading a flock of sheep is a meaningful and symbolic figure. It is also the reason why rams were often sacrificed. But that didn’t stop astronomers with imagination from seeing the outlines of entirely different figures in the constellation.

In the area occupied by this constellation there used to be a presently non-existent one, Musca Borealis (the Northern Fly), suggested by astronomer Plancius in 1612 and denoted as Apes (the Bees). Its brightest star is now known as 41 Arietis.

In the 1627 star atlas by German lawyer and astronomer Julius Schiller, the constellation of Aries went by the name of Apostle Peter.

And there’s more. It was associated with a farmhand by the Babylonians, with twins collecting taxes by the Chinese, with a porpoise by the Marshall Islands' inhabitants. And the ancient Greeks saw it as a ram and his golden fleece, from the story of Jason and the Argonauts.

Do you remember how this story began? Ino, daughter of the King of Thebes, was eager to get rid of her stepchildren, Phrixus and Helle, and organized a conspiracy that was to result in Phrixus being sacrificed to save the harvest. When Athamas brought his son to the top of Mount Laphystium to sacrifice him to Zeus, the cloud goddess Nephele interfered by sending a winged ram with golden wool from the sky. Phrixus, together with Helle, climbed onto the ram's back and flew eastward to the land of Colchis. But Helle lost her grip on the way, and fell into the strait between Europe and Asia, which the Greeks named Hellespont after her. Upon reaching Colchis, Phrixus gave the Golden Fleece to the formidable Colchian king who married him to his daughter Chalciope.

The king got the fleece, and the ram flew to the sky. That’s why, according to the mythologists, the constellation turned out to be rather weak. If the Golden Fleece had remained in place, Aries would have shone brighter. But in the end, the fleece was stolen from the Colchian king by his daughter Medea and Jason who covered their wedding bed with it. So, as a result, we can see a short-haired Ram among the stars.

As a matter of fact, the constellation is indeed not very bright, but it has a second magnitude star, which is a legend in itself, and 6 stars with proper names, which aren’t the case so often in constellations.

• ? Ari/Hamal is the brightest star in Aries, and the 48th brightest star we can see in the night sky. This is an orange giant with an apparent stellar magnitude of 1.98 to 2.04. The star is approximately 2 times as massive as the Sun, and is located 66 light-years away from us. Ptolemy described ? Arietis in his Almagest as lying outside the actual figure of the constellation. He regarded it as one of the informatae, unformed stars. Between 2000 and 100 B.C., Hamal was situated in the vernal equinox point marking the beginning of spring. The name Hamal name comes from the Arabic phrase «ras al-hamal», which means «head of the ram». Several well-known meteor showers are related to this constellation: May and Autumn Arietids, Delta Arietids, Epsilon Arietids, Daytime Arietids, and Aries-Triangulids.
• ? Ari/Sheratan. A white star with an apparent stellar magnitude of 2.64, located 59.6 light-years away from the Earth. The name Sheratan comes from the Arabic phrase «ash-sharatan», which means «the two signs», it symbolizes the stellar duet of the vernal equinox: ? Aries and ? Aries. It could have been a trio, if 2 millenniums ago the Arabs had taken into account the presence of Hamal in this particular constellation.
• ? Ari/Mesarthim. A triple-star system comprised of two white stars and a star with a magnitude of 9.6. The system is approximately 160 light-years away from the Earth. It used to be called the First Star of Aries, because there was time when it was the closest naked-eye star to the vernal equinox point. And Ptolemy defined it as the «more advanced one of the two stars on the horn», while ? Aries was at the rear. But times change, and stars change their places too.

The constellation of Aries can be seen in the Northern hemisphere in late winter and early spring. It can be observed at latitudes of 90 to –60 degrees.

Taurus

This bull with a bulbous head is difficult to miss in the night sky, even in the middle of a megalopolis with its neon lights and smog. His high sharp horns and triangular muzzle are very clearly outlined by the stars. He is staring at Orion a bit quizzically, with the reddish Aldebaran twinkling in his right eye, his forelegs are bent as if he was getting ready for a jump but stopped not to startle the cloud of the Pleiades behind the scruff of his neck. That was approximately how John Flamsteed drew Taurus in his Atlas Coelestis in 1729. This picture can be easily recreated if you look at the starry sky, for example, in January.

Interestingly, only the bull’s front part can be seen in the sky. The mythologists suggest an explanation related to the ocean: the hind legs and the croup are immersed in water and therefore not visible. And also, there is no room in the sky to show the whole bull because he is too big. This is the reason why there are the constellations of Aries and Cetus where the Bull’s hind part should have been. So there is only a half of Taurus visible in the sky, the same as of Pegasus. But that’s just one oddity, the other one is no less remarkable: Taurus travels backwards along the sky as if backing away from Orion.

The zodiacal constellation of Taurus is the 17th largest one in the sky. It lies in the first quadrant of the Northern hemisphere and covers an area of 797 square degrees. It is one of the 48 constellations catalogued by Greek astronomer Ptolemy in the 2nd century. Taurus can be observed at latitudes of +90° to –65°. It is surrounded with seven constellations: Aries to the west, Gemini to the east, Perseus and Auriga to the north, Eridanus to the south, Orion to the southwest, and Cetus to the southwest. This is a really large constellation: astronomers reckon there are 216 to 500 naked-eye stars in it, as many as 17 stars with proper names, 2 Messier objects… So actually, there are things to explore and to compose legends about.

Among the legends related to the constellations, two are most popular. One of them is about Io, a mistress of Zeus, who the god turned into a heifer to hide her from his wife Hera. But the jealous Hera suspected infidelity and sent a guard, the hundred-eyed watchman Argus, to watch Io. Io escaped, she plunged into the sea and swam beyond the horizon where the sky merged with the ocean. That was how she ended up in the sky.

In the other legend, Taurus is an image of Zeus himself who assumed the form of a bull to abduct Europa, a daughter of the king of Tyre. To do that, he sneaked into the herd on the pasture next to the meadow where beautiful girls, Europa’s friends, were larking about; he watched them and waited for an opportune moment. He was very good-looking in that role, with snow-white skin and polished, glistening horns; Europa noticed him and came closer to pat him. And he went down on his knees, as if suggesting that she could mount his back. By the way, in the star maps Taurus has been traditionally depicted with his front legs crossed, probably kneeling to lure Europa onto his back. And after Europa climbed his back the bull walked into the water and swam; the girl had no choice but to grad a tight hold of his horns. That was how they got to the island of Crete where Zeus restored his appearance of a god, seduced Europa, showered her with jewels and gave her a dog that would later become a constellation too, Canis Major. One of the descendants of Zeus and Europa was Minos, the king of Crete, who erected the famous Knossos Palace where games with bulls were held.

There are some unique star clusters in the constellation of Taurus, which cannot be ignored.

• The Hyades are the stars that make the bull’s muzzle so bright and recognizable. This is a V- shaped group of stars, which was referred to as «star rain» by Ovid in The Fasti. And there is another mystery of nature lying behind this name: the rise of these stars at a certain time of the year was considered a portent of rainy weather to come. In the mythology, the Hyades were the daughters of Atlas and the Oceanid Aethra. Their elder brother was Hyas, a brave hunter who once got killed by a lioness. Weeping inconsolably, his sisters died of grief and were ascended to the sky for that. Ptolemy listed five Hyades in his star catalogue, but it was as early as in the 2nd century. Binoculars and small telescopes show much more stars in the cluster, astronomers speak of several hundreds of luminaries. The members of the Hyades move in space, and in 1908 American astronomer Lewis Boss (1846–1912) published his famous diagram showing their paths converging towards a point near Betelgeuse, the brightest star in Orion.
• The Pleiades is a Messier object, a star cluster that looks like a cloud of elves or a swarm of golden bees on the Bull’s back. The Pleiades also have another name, the Seven Sisters. According to a Greek legend, they are daughters of the Titan Atlas and the Oceanid Pleione, ascended to the sky by Zeus who thus saved them from being pursued by the amorous Orion. The origin of their name is associated with Pleione, the seven sisters’ mother: «plein» means the sailing sport, «Pleione» is the queen of sails, and «the Pleiades» are sails, because in the ancient Greeks' times they used to be visible all night long during summer sea voyages. The Pleiades are approximately 440 light-years away from the Earth. And they are so original that the ancient Greeks believed the Pleiades to be a separate mini-constellation, and used them as a calendar marker. (Picture of the Pleiades courtesy of SpaceEngine)
• The Crab Nebula is another Messier object. It is located next to the tip of the bull’s right horn marked as ? Tau, and is the result of one of the most well-known events in the history of astronomy: the star explosion observed from the Earth in 1054. The explosion was so bright that it could be seen in daylight during three weeks. Now we know that the event was a supernova, a violent death of a massive star, and the Crab Nebula is the remnants of the exploded star, which can now be observed only through telescopes.

There are a few stars in the constellation of Taurus, which have legends and lots of stories attached to them.

• ? Tau/Aldebaran. Taurus's brightest star is its sparkling right eye, the 13th brightest star in the sky. This is an orange giant with an apparent magnitude of 0.75 to 0.95, the star’s diameter is about 40 times as great as that of the Sun, and it is approximately 425 times as bright. The star lies 65.1 light-years away from the Earth. Its name derives from «al-dabaran», Arabic for «the follower». According to the 10^th century Persian astronomer al-Sufi, the name was given to it because the star seems to follow the Pleiades across the sky. The Romans called this star Palilicium because it disappeared in twilight during the festival devoted to Pales, a Roman deity of shepherds, on April 21. But as for the ancient Greeks, strangely enough, they didn’t give the star a proper name. Only Ptolemy referred to it as «the Torch» in his book on astrology Tetrabiblos.
• ? Tau/Elnath with an apparent magnitude of 1.68. It is a white-blue giant star lying around 131 light-years away from us. Elnath is 700 times as bright as the Sun. Its name comes from the Arabic phrase «an-nath», which means «the butting».
• ? Tau/Alcyone is the third brightest star in Taurus and the brightest member of the Pleiades cluster. It has an apparent stellar magnitude of 2.87 and lies around 370 light-years from the Sun. In fact, this isn’t even one star but a star system, a blue-white giant with an apparent magnitude of 2.87. Alcyone’s radius is 10 times greater than that of the Sun and it is about 2400 times brighter.

The constellation of Taurus is best visible in December and January. The Sun appears in Taurus from May 13 to June 21.

Gemini

On a frosty winter evening, when the air is clear and transparent, and the violet-colored atlas of the sky is studded with myriads of stars, they are the brightest ones: the figures of two brothers, half-hugging, telling their star tales to each other. Their inclined heads are so close, and their feet are touching the Milky Way, as if the brothers are on the road flying towards adventures. There is probably no other constellation in the sky where two bright stars would lie so close to each other ? real Twins indeed!

Gemini is one of the 48 constellations, first catalogued by Greek astronomer Claudius Ptolemy in the 2nd century. It is the 30th largest constellation in the sky, and Pollux, the constellation’s brightest star, is the giant star closest to us. The constellation covers an area of 514 square degrees and lies in the second quadrant of the Northern hemisphere. It can be seen at latitudes of +90° to –60°. That is, it is convenient to observe it from the Northern hemisphere in winter, and in summer Gemini is well visible in the Southern one too.

Gemini is surrounded with six constellations: Taurus to the west, Cancer to the east, Auriga and Lynx to the north, Monoceros and Canis Minor to the south.

This zodiacal constellation lies along the path the Sun travels across the sky during the year. The orange giant Pollux and the white giant Castor are its two brightest stars. Greeks referred to them together as the Dioskuroi (Dioscuri in Latin), which literally means «sons of Zeus». But there is still debate among the mythologists on whether they both were indeed sons of Zeus, due to the unusual circumstances of their birth. Their mother Leda, queen of Sparta, was indeed once visited by Zeus once in the form of a swan (the constellation of Cygnus was named after this disguise of his). That same night, Leda also lay with her husband, King Tyndareus. Both unions were fruitful, for Leda subsequently gave birth to four children: immortal Pollux and Helen (later to become the famous war-monger Helen of Troy) by Zeus, and mortal Castor and Clytemnestra by Tyndareus. Castor and Pollux grew up the closest of friends as they never quarreled or acted without consulting each other. They were said to look alike and even to dress alike as is often the case with twins.

Castor became a famed horseman and warrior who taught Heracles to fence and Pollux was second to none in fist-fighting. When Castor was killed in a battle Zeus gave Pollux immortality, but the latter refused and asked for permission to share this divine gift with his brother. Moved by the request, Zeus placed the brothers in the sky and allowed them to live in turns in the underground kingdom of Hades and on Olympus. This detail of the myth has to do with the fact that at certain times an attentive observer can spot Castor in the background of dawn, and Pollux of sunset on the same day. Interestingly, the appearance of St Elmo’s fire, the glow of atmospheric electricity discharges on solitary tall objects, such as masts or steeples, was perceived in the past as a visit paid to the Twins by their sister Helen of Troy.

• ? Gem/Castor is the second-brightest star in Gemini and the 44th brightest star in the sky. This is a double star with a combined apparent magnitude of 1.58. Astronomers believe that Castor is in fact a complex system of six stars bound together by gravity, although at first sight they seem to be one star. Although Castor has been given the Alpha Geminorum designation, it is almost one-half stellar magnitude fainter than Pollux which is Beta Geminorum. Despite being considered twin stars, Castor and Pollux are unrelated because they lie at different distances from us, 51 and 34 light-years respectively.
• ? Gem/Pollux is the brightest star in the constellation of Gemini, ranking 17th brightest among the celestial luminaries. It has an apparent magnitude of 1.14 and lies 33.78 light-years away from the Solar system. This is a mature orange giant star, with a mass twice as great as that of the Sun, and a radius nine times as great as the Sun’s. In 2006 the astronomers confirmed that there was an extrasolar planet, Pollux b, revolving around the star, its mass is at least 2.3 times as great as that of Jupiter, and its period of revolution is equal to 590 days.
• ? Gem/Alhena is the third-brightest star with an apparent stellar magnitude of 1.91, visible to the naked eye. This is a white subgiant star located at a distance of roughly 109 light-years from the Earth. It is 123 times as bright as the Sun, with a mass 2.8 times as great as that of the Sun, its radius is 3.3 times as great as the Sun’s. The star’s name comes from the Arabic word «Al-Han’ah» meaning «the brand on the camel’s neck». The star is sometimes also called Almeisan, which means «the shining one» in the Arabic culture.

There is also a Messier object in the constellation, Messier 35 (photo courtesy of SpaceEngine), this open star cluster occupies a region of the sky about the size of the full Moon. The cluster has an apparent magnitude of 5.30 and lies at a distance of around 2800 light-years from the Earth. Messier 35 was discovered almost at the same time by two scientists: Swiss astronomer Philippe Loys de Cheseaux in 1745, and then by English doctor and astronomer John Bevis in 1750.

The constellation is best visible in the sky in December and January. And in latitudes to the north of the 62nd degree north latitude (for instance, in Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland), Castor and Pollux never go beyond the horizon.

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