Nearly overhead at around midnight, local daylight time, is the constellation that owes its name to a theft: Coma Berenices or Berenices Hair.

Eratosthenes in the 3rd century BC was among the first to make note of this faint group of stars. It is actually a large, loose galactic star cluster some 250 light years away that appears as a faint shimmering patch of light on clear moonless nights.

As a cluster, Coma Berenices is by far at its best in a pair of good binoculars. If, on the other hand, you attempt observation of it with a high-powered telescope the impression of a cluster will become totally lost because of the telescopes narrower field of view.

The story goes that Berenice sacrificed her beautiful amber tresses and placed them in the temple of Aphrodite at Zephyrium as she vowed to do if her husband returned victorious from his war against Syria. Shortly after the royal couples happy reunion, however, the hair mysteriously vanished, apparently stolen from the temple.

But it was Conon of Samos, a court astronomer and mathematician, who eventually convinced the disconsolate queen that the gods had taken the locks and put them up in the sky.

There is yet another variation of this story, in that Conon first points out the stellar gathering to a very angry Ptolemy, who apparently was very fond of his wifes beautiful hair!

The story of Berenices hair would have likely remained obscure and unknown were it not for the Greek poet, Callimachus, whose poem The Lock of Berenice formed the basis for our understanding of this constellations history. Later, after the fall of Athens, The Lock was thankfully preserved by the Roman lyric poet Catullus, who translated it and added it to his own collection of writings (number 66) in the 1^st Century BC.

What makes The Lock strange is its angry narrator: Berenices hair itself! Apparently, the queens golden tresses were none too happy with their new place among the stars:

Such is the story of how the cluster probably received its moniker, though this region of the sky was not generally recognized as the separate constellation of Coma Berenices until the beginning of the 17^th Century. Initially, in fact, many of the star atlases of that era did not depict this star cluster as a celestial hairpiece.

Indeed, in various star maps of the late Middle Ages the cluster was identified as a rose-wreath or ivy-wreath, and occasionally as a Sheaf of Wheat held in the hands of the nearby constellation Virgo. Others saw it as the hair of Sampson, not Berenice, while still others regarded it as a tuft at the end of the tail of Leo, the Lion.

Credit is usually given to the astronomer Tycho Brahe for first cataloguing it officially as Coma Berenices in the year 1602.

The sight of Coma Berenices high in the sky is bad news, however, if you are a fan of the Milky Way.

Just to the east of this cluster is the north galactic pole, one of two points in the sky lying farthest from the ghostly circle of light that composes the Milky Way. So right now, with the cluster passing almost directly overhead around midnight, there is little to be seen of the Milky Way itself; it then runs completely around the horizon and is most always obliterated by the thicker layer of haze that perpetually rims the horizon.

Conversely, when the cluster is rising or setting, the Milky Way appears to arch nearly overhead. Nowadays, youll have to arise just before sunrise to get such a view.

Or as Hans A. Rey noted in his now classic book, The Stars, A New Way to See Them: "Thus, no hair can ever get into the milk, celestially speaking."