May
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For May, we feature two constellations -- Leo and Virgo.

LEO the lion is one of the few constellations that actually LOOKS like something, and by wonderful good fortune, it looks like a lion, resting prone on its belly. In other words, it's just 'lion' there.

Making this pattern easy to spot on spring evenings is the presence of one first-magnitude star, Regulus, marking the lion's heart, and a host of other bright stars: two second magnitude stars and three of the third. The pattern of stars is of course an accident, some of them being nearer of farther from us - from another angle, you'd see a totally different shape.

But from Earth, these stars have been "lionized" for thousands of years; the Babylonians and Egyptians both drew a lion from them. The Greeks saw this lion as the Nemean Lion, a beast whose skin was impervious to weapons - Hercules slayed the lion by choking it to death, guaranteeing himself and the lion a place among the stars, but definitely removing him from the ASPCA mailing list. More recent attempts to draw this constellation as Leonardo DiCaprio here have thankfully failed, and so the king of the African plains is secure for now.

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As one of the "zodiac" constellations, Leo plays host to the sun, which passes in front of these stars between August 9th and September 15th. It also contains planets, sometimes; Mercury, Venus, and Mars in the fall of 2000, for example. The moon visits once a month, of course. The star Regulus is the closest to the path of the planets in the sky (the "ecliptic") of all the first magnitude stars - just half a degree, and some remember this by saying that Regulus is "regularly" making close passes or even passing behind the planets and moon.

Venus is a bit over one degree north on August 5, and Mars does a similar pass on September 15. Closer passes are rare, and sadly the much bigger moon is in a tilted orbit and misses Regulus by a good margin for several years yet.

Like Leo, Virgo is a zodiac constellation, and the sun is seen against these stars between September 16 to October 30, after it moves eastward from Leo. Virgo is populated by one first magnitude star, Spica, and five of the third magnitude - a goodly sprinkle that allows even city dwellers to make out the pattern of the Virgin with a little patience and practice.

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Virgo, being among the Zodiac constellations, has always been well known, and the Egyptians logged these stars onto the ancient Denderah and Thebes charts; there is speculation that Virgo was seen as Isis to the Egyptians, a goddess who gave birth to the Milky Way by dropping kernels of corn from a ear she carried. This agricultural theme is also applied by the Greeks; Virgo is drawn today as a maiden carrying a sheaf of wheat, marked by Spica.

The most famous legends about Virgo cast her as Persephone, daughter of god boss Zeus, who is kidnapped by Pluto and taken to the underworld...these animated dogs clearly have a secret life we don't see in the cartoons. Anyway, there was a custody fight - no pre-nuptial agreement, obviously - and Zeus arranged that Persephone would spend six months in the living world (our sunny months) and six down below watching cartoons while the world above shivered through winter. While the Greeks explained the seasons by saying that Persephone's mom, Demeter (goddess of the harvest, hence the grain Virgo carries) is in a better moon when that son in law lets the girl loose, the author suspects the Greeks were really hoping to drum up more cash by having a winter Olympics.

To find out about celestial objects you can find in our featured constellations, go to Deep Sky Objects.


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