Observation 3.8

Date: March 8, 2014

Observation: On this cold and windy night, I, like I told you the week before, found another constellation in the sky! The lucky constellation for today is... Cassiopeia!

Now, before I get into the story of Cassiopeia, I would like to say that all the stories that I tell you about a constellation is just one interpretation of the story. There are countless other stories made of each constellation because different regions of the world can interpret one constellation in many different forms or ways, for example in Greek mythology Cassiopeia is known as the Queen while the Chinese looks at Cassiopeia as a legendary Chinese charioteer, in fact they call Cassiopeia, Wangliang. The only reason why I choose to pick mostly the Greek interpretations of the constellations is because they are more widely known to people. Also, as I had said before that there are a total of 88 constellations in the sky throughout the year, there of course can be more that people can randomly make up if they want to. This ominous number, 88, comes from the International Astronomical Union in which a group of astronomers, in the early 20th century, came together and decided that because more and more stars and celestial bodies were being found, they would pick constellations and place boundaries around them so to help with finding and recognizing new stars or bodies. I am not saying that they only picked Greek constellations, because that is not true, there are Egyptian, Chinese, Indian constellations and more part of the 88 standard constellations. But don't let that stop you! If you happen to see a picture of a car or a face in the sky, then go right ahead and name it whatever you want, have your own constellation but just be aware, I am not picking favorites or putting down any other stories, I am just picking the one that corresponds with the origin of a constellation.

Alright! since all that is cleared up...Cassiopeia. Cassiopeia, like I said is also known as the Queen. Now, she is part of a sort of soap opera in the skies, so I will be mentioning some constellations that I have not mentioned before, but don't worry I will talk about them in the following weeks. Cassiopeia was always known as a very vain and proud wife of King Cepheus of Ethiopia (Cassiopeia and Cepheus are the only husband and wife couple in the constellations). One day she declared that she held more beauty than the sea nymphs called the Nereids. Being that a mortal challenged their beauty, the 50 Nereids, daughters of the Old Man of the Sea, Nereus, decided to take revenge on the Queen. Amphitrite, one of the sea nymphs, was married to Poseidon, the sea god, and with her sisters, convinced him to punish Cassiopeia. To appease them , Poseidon sent down a sea monster called Cetus to destroy King Cepheus' country. To stop the monster, Cepheus and Cassiopeia offered their beautiful daughter Andromeda as a sacrifice. Before giving her to Cetus, however, she was saved by Perseus, the hero. So to punish her, Cassiopeia was placed on the celestial pole forever while part of the time she is seen to be hanging upside down. She is placed in the sky in between Perseus and Andromeda as well as next to Cepheus. She also is interpreted to be stretching out her hands with a bitterly expression on her face while looking at her daughter, blaming her for Cassiopeia's sin.

So much drama... Another fact about the constellation is that it has an asterism in it, which is a group of stars that look like an actual object. This asterism is called the Worm Asterism. You can probably see that in the picture above. She is also circumpolar, meaning that the constellation is able to be seen in more than one season. She also has a Messier object within her known as M 103.

Well, I hope you enjoyed one interpretation of the story. If you want to know where I get all these stories, I will link the website at the bottom. Until next time!



http://www.ianridpath.com/startales/startales3.htm