Not too many people are
aware of the term "Cat Nights," which goes back to the days when people
believed in witches. Old Irish legends have it that a witch could turn herself
into a black cat eight times, but on the ninth time she couldn't change back.
Supposedly, this is where we get the saying, "A cat has nine lives."
In our current evening sky,
there are several members of the cat family that ride high overhead and toward
the south as darkness falls.
As the winter stars begin
to depart in the west this first full month of spring, the ancient Lion - Leo
- dominates high in the southern sky. Leo is among the most ancient of the constellations,
with a backward-question mark curve of six stars in the creature's head appearing
to form a large stellar Sickle.
Blue-white Regulus is the
brightest of these at the end of the Sickle's handle yet the faintest of the
21 stars in the first-magnitude category. Regulus is 69 light-years away, and
has luminosity 110 times that of our Sun. Copernicus has been credited with
giving the star its Latin name, a diminutive of Rex, or "king" which
may relate to the four "royal stars" (with Aldebaran, Antares and
Fomalhaut) about 90 degrees apart on the sky.
As the brightest star in
Leo, Regulus has been almost universally associated in ancient cultures with
the concept of royalty and kingly power. This star lies in the handle of the
so-called "Sickle of Leo," a star pattern resembling a large reversed
question mark. The Sickle, when rising and climbing the sky, is seen cutting
upward. To modern sky-watchers the Sickle outlines the majestic head and mane
of a great westward-facing lion.
The lion most closely associated
with this constellation is the Nemean one - the mythological beast which terrorized
the Valley of Nemea and was unaffected by ordinary weaponry (such as arrows
and spears) due to its impenetrable hide. Another story regarding the Egyptian
concept of the Lion associates it with the Sphinx, that famous giant half-lion,
half-human sculpture in the desert. It has been suggested that the Sphinx represent
both Leo and Virgo, each of which hosts the Sun during the Nile's crucial annual
flooding.
As to whether its stars
actually suggest a leonine figure, the backward-question mark curve in the creature's
head does suggest its mane, but it still takes imagination to see a lion in
these stars.
Algeiba, in the blade of
the Sickle, appears as a single star to the naked eye. However, as a telescope
of only moderate size will clearly show, it is really one of the most beautiful
double stars in the sky. It should really be observed in twilight or moonlight
to reveal the contrasting colors -- one star greenish; the other a delicate
yellow.
Eastward from the Sickle
there is a right triangle of stars which also belongs to Leo. At the eastern
point of this triangle you will find Denebola, marking the tip of the Lion's
tail.
The Lion is a member of
the cat family, but although there are three constellations that represent dogs,
there are no cats.
Two centuries ago, some
star atlases depicted a cat: Felis, the creation of an 18th Century
Frenchman, Joseph Jerome Le Francais de Lalande (1732-1807). He explained his
choice: "I am very fond of cats. I will let this figure scratch on the
chart. The starry sky has worried me quite enough in my life, so that now I
can have my joke with it."
Although this celestial
feline does not exist today, cat fanciers will be consoled by the fact that
along with Leo, there are two other members of the cat family that are well
situated and close together in the current evening sky: Leo Minor, the Smaller
Lion and Lynx.
Lynx, the only animal constellation
that has identical Latin and English names. This celestial feline is rather
dim and hard to visualize. Johannes Hevelius (1611-1687) a 17th Century
Renaissance man placed it in the sky. Besides being an astronomer, Hevelius
was an artist, engraver, well-to-do man of affairs and a leading citizen of
Danzig, Poland. Interestingly, the old astronomy books and sky charts, which
depicted the constellations as allegorical drawings, placed the lucida (brightest
star) of Lynx in the tuft of its tail. And from these drawings it would seem
that nearby Leo Minor, the Smaller Lion, is about to provoke a cat fight by
biting Lynx's tail.
Although the telescope was
just coming into general use during Hevelius' time, he openly rejected the new
invention. In his star atlas of 1690, he actually tucked a cartoon into the
corner of one sky chart showing a cherub holding a card with the Latin motto
"The naked eye is best."
In creating Lynx, Hevelius
chose a cat-like animal that possesses excellent eyesight. Lynx itself is a
region chiefly devoid of bright stars, and Hevelius openly admitted that you
would have to have a lynx's eyes to see it!
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Joe Rao
serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium.
He writes about astronomy for The New York Times and other publications, and
he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News
12 Westchester, New York.
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