Sky Atlas

Constellations and the myths behind them

Twelve constellations that carry a Greek story, plotted from real star positions (J2000 coordinates) with their main stars and traditional figures. Some, like the Bear and Cassiopeia, never set from most of Canada; others, like the Altar and much of the Argo, never rise this far north and belong to southern skies. Where ancient writers disagree about whose story a constellation tells, we say so.

The Great Bear

Latin name: Ursa Major
Best seen: All year from Canada; highest on spring evenings
Brightest star: Alioth

Zeus loved Callisto, a huntress in Artemis’ band, and she became a bear: through Hera’s jealousy, Artemis’ anger or Zeus’s own attempt to hide her, depending on the source. Raised to the sky, she circles the pole and never bathes in Ocean, the detail Homer gives when Odysseus keeps the Bear on his left. Ovid says Juno begged the sea gods to keep her out of their waters. Canadians know her seven brightest stars as the Big Dipper; Homer’s sailors called them the Wagon.

The Ox-Driver

Latin name: Boötes
Best seen: Late spring and summer evenings
Brightest star: Arcturus

Homer calls him late-setting, because this long kite of stars sinks into the west feet first and takes much of the night to vanish. Greek writers disagreed about who he was: Arcas, son of Callisto, forever following his mother the Bear around the pole, or Icarius of Athens (not Penelope’s father), who learned winemaking from Dionysus and was killed by shepherds who thought his wine was poison. Orange Arcturus, the Bear-Guard, shines between his knees.

Orion the Hunter

Latin name: Orion
Best seen: Winter evenings, December to March
Brightest star: Rigel

A giant hunter, son of Poseidon in the version credited to Hesiod, Orion could stride through the sea. Blinded by King Oenopion of Chios, he walked east carrying a boy from Hephaestus’ forge on his shoulders as a guide, until the rising Sun healed his eyes. His death is told many ways, by Artemis’ arrows or a scorpion’s sting, and the Scorpion still rises as he sets. Homer has the Bear keep watch on him across the pole.

The Bull and the Pleiades

Latin name: Taurus
Best seen: Late autumn and winter evenings
Brightest star: Aldebaran

The Bull recalls Zeus carrying Europa across the sea to Crete. On its shoulder ride the Pleiades, daughters of Atlas and Pleione, whose rising and setting at dawn framed the Greek farming and sailing year. Hesiod warns that when they plunge into the misty sea, fleeing Orion, ships belong on land. Seven sisters are named but six are easy to see; Ovid says the seventh hides, ashamed of a mortal husband or grieving for Troy.

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The Twins

Latin name: Gemini
Best seen: Winter and early spring evenings
Brightest star: Pollux

Castor the horseman and Polydeuces the boxer, Helen’s twin brothers, raised in the house of Tyndareus at Sparta, uncle of Penelope. When Castor was killed, Polydeuces, the son of Zeus, gave up half his immortality so the two could share it, one day among the gods and the next beneath the earth. A Homeric Hymn calls them rescuers of ships in storms, and sailors took the flickering lights now called St Elmo’s fire as a sign of their presence.

The Ship Argo

Latin name: Argo Navis
Best seen: Late winter, low in the south; most of it never rises over Canada
Brightest star: Canopus

The ship of Jason and the Argonauts, built with Athena’s help, which slipped between Scylla and Charybdis while Thetis and her sister Nereids lifted it through the Wandering Rocks. Aratus noticed that the figure is drawn stern-first, the way sailors turn a ship to beach it. Modern astronomers split this huge constellation into Carina, Puppis and Vela. Its brightest star, Canopus, second only to Sirius in the night sky, never clears the horizon anywhere in Canada.

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The Queen on Her Throne

Latin name: Cassiopeia
Best seen: All year from Canada; best on autumn evenings
Brightest star: Schedar

Queen of the Ethiopians and wife of Cepheus, she boasted that she, or in Hyginus her daughter Andromeda, was more beautiful than the Nereids. Poseidon answered with a flood and a sea monster, and Andromeda was chained to a rock until Perseus came. Set on her throne among the stars, the queen is carried head-down for part of every night as the sky turns. From most of Canada her bright W never sets.

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The Dolphin

Latin name: Delphinus
Best seen: Late summer and autumn evenings
Brightest star: Rotanev

When the Nereid Amphitrite fled Poseidon’s courtship and hid near Atlas at the edge of the world, a dolphin found her and persuaded her to return as queen of the sea. In thanks, say the astronomical writers, Poseidon set its likeness among the stars. Other tellers make it the dolphin that carried the singer Arion safely to shore, a rescue Herodotus describes. Its small, bright diamond sits just east of the Eagle.

The Eagle

Latin name: Aquila
Best seen: Summer and early autumn evenings
Brightest star: Altair

The eagle of Zeus, which carried the Trojan boy Ganymede up to Olympus and, in some accounts, bore its master’s thunderbolts. In the Odyssey, eagles are Zeus’s messengers again and again: two fight above the assembly on Ithaca, one snatches a goose before Telemachus’ eyes, and in Penelope’s dream an eagle kills her twenty geese and speaks with her husband’s voice. Bright Altair shines at the centre of the figure.

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The Swan

Latin name: Cygnus
Best seen: Summer and autumn evenings
Brightest star: Deneb

The long cross of the Swan flies down the Milky Way. Greek tellers hung several stories on it: Zeus in the form of a swan with Leda, mother of Helen and the Twins, or Cycnus, kinsman and friend of Phaethon, who searched the river Eridanus for his fallen companion until he turned into a swan, a bird that, Ovid says, still distrusts the sky and its fire. Deneb, at the tail, is one of the most luminous stars the eye can see.

The River

Latin name: Eridanus
Best seen: Late autumn and winter evenings; its southern end never rises over Canada
Brightest star: Achernar

The river into which Phaethon, half-brother of Circe, fell burning when he lost control of the chariot of his father, the Sun. His sisters, the Heliades, wept on its banks until they became poplars and their tears hardened into amber. Ancient writers argued over whether the starry river was the Po, the Nile or Ocean itself. It rises beside Rigel at Orion’s foot and winds south to Achernar, the river’s end, which never rises over Canada.

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The Altar

Latin name: Ara
Best seen: Never rises over Canada; June and July evenings in the southern hemisphere
Brightest star: Beta Arae

Before the war against the Titans, the gods swore their alliance over an altar, and the astronomical handbook of Hyginus says the Cyclopes built it. Zeus set it in the sky as a reminder of loyal oaths. Aratus pictures it low in the south and calls it a sign of storms for sailors when it shines clear while clouds crowd the rest of the sky. It lies below the Scorpion’s tail, too far south ever to be seen from Canada.

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