Look Up At The Stars

Welcome to the sixth edition of 'Look Up At The Stars', throughout these blogs we've been taking a closer look at constellation and the stories behind them. Why? Well, if you remember from all the previous editions, we had two reasons for that. For one, they are just the most fascinating thing. Two, if you ever find yourself in the Night Court, knowing the stars might come in handy. And three, if you're on a date, you can impress the other person with your knowledge of the galaxy. Because everyone loves a charmer that knows their stars.

The constellation for this week is...

The Perseus Constellation

Perseus is a mid-sized constellation and is also the 24th largest constellation in the night sky. It is bordered by Aries and Taurus to the south.

It is also the origin point for the annual Perseid meteor shower. The plane of the Milky Way passes through Perseus, so it is rich in deep sky objects Perseus contains eight named stars: Algol, Atik, Berehinya, Menkib, Miram, Mirfak, Misam, and Muspelheim.

Sharing a region of sky with the Perseus constellation is a vast neighborhood of galaxies called the Perseus cluster. It's a group of thousands of galaxies 240 light-years away from Earth.

The Myth of Perseus

Perseus was tasked to kill Medusa, a beautiful yet horrendous monster that turned those who looked at her to stone.

Perseus thus had a hard task. He asked Athena and Hermes for help and two of them, together with the nymphs, provided winged sandals to fly him to the end of the world where gorgons lived, a cap that made him invisible, a sword and a mirrored shield. The latter was the most important tool Perseus had, since it allowed him to see a reflection of Medusa’s face and to avoid being turned into stone.

When he cut Medusa’s head off, from the drops of her blood suddenly appeared two offspring: Pegasus, a winged horse, and Chrysaor, a giant or a winged boar. It’s believed that those two were Medusa’s children with Poseidon.

Later, a woman caught the hero's eye.

King Cepheus and Queen Cassiopeia had a lovely daughter named Andromeda. Her mother said she was more lovely than the sea nymphs of Poseidon, the ocean god, due to her beauty. This infuriated Poseidon, who tethered Andromeda to a rock so that the terrifying sea creature Cetus might devour her. After killing Cetus and rescuing the princess Andromeda, Perseus took her as his wife.