Constellation Talk

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13759892/


Does anyone here that is an observer actually know the Greek mythology
about what they look at or even care? I don't much. Maybe I should. Just
what was the state of mind when they projected these images in space and
time? To most, these are just names of obvious patterns of stars but when
you actually see the whole constellation with a picture, one really has to
wonder what was going on.

"SunSeeker" wrote:

Does anyone here that is an observer actually know the Greek mythology
about what they look at or even care?

It's not been a major priority of mine; but having read about the
constellations in numerous books over the years some of the mythology
has sunk in and made it into long-term memory.

A nice little book that specializes in constellation mythology and
history is "Star Tales" by Ian Ridpath.

A book sitting on a nearby book shelf is titled "Stars of the First
People" by Dorcas S. Miller. This one is subtitled "Native American
Star Myths and Constellations". I've not gotten around to reading it
yet.

Burnham's Celestial Handbook(s) has a heathy amount of information
concerning the constellations and associated mythology from a variety
of cultures. This one definitely deserves re-reading from time to
time.

The native american story of Devil's Tower and the Pleiades (in the
Burnham series and elsewhere) I've remembered. Living near a
reservation and working with native americans may have had an
influence on my remembering.

Then there's archeoastronomy -- a somewhat different topic. I've
enjoyed E. C. Krupp's excellent books in this area. I've visited the
Big Horn Medicine Wheel -- a native american version of Stonehenge
near the Montana-Wyoming border. If I remember correctly, the
elevation of this site is around 10,000 feet. (I just looked it up.
The elevation is 9,642 feet).

So yes, I certainly have an interest in constellation mythology,
history, and related topics; but I've retained only a tiny fraction of
all I've read in these areas.

Willie R. Meghar

There must be dozens of books on the topic, but another outstanding
reference is "Star Names: Their Meaning and Lore" by Richard Hinckley
Allen.

Willie R. Meghar wrote:
A nice little book that specializes in constellation mythology and
history is "Star Tales" by Ian Ridpath.
.....
=============
- Dale Gombert (SkySea at aol.com)
122.38W, 47.58N, W. Seattle, WA
http://flavorj.com/~skysea

I love the constellations for themselves and use them constantly to find
my way around the sky, whether for naked eye observing or telescopic.
My first interest in the night sky was simply to learn the
constellations. Where else can you see anything that's changed so
little throughout human history? That being said, I don't have a DEEP
interest, and only have a superficial knowledge of the major players in
most of the ancient mythology involved. It's sort of fun to know the
old stories from ancient history and other cultures, but it's seldom
written about much anymore, and the mythology isn't referred to in day
to day literature nearly as much as in times past. When you read older
popular astronomy books by Garrett Serviss and others from around the
turn of the last century, much more time is spent on mythology, and much
more mythological knowledge is assumed on the part of his readers. For
better or worse, I'd suppose we've replaced all that with gossip about
popular celebrities or something.
Marty

Dale Gombert wrote:
There must be dozens of books on the topic, but another outstanding
reference is "Star Names: Their Meaning and Lore" by Richard Hinckley
Allen.

It's a fun little read (or a fun big read, I suppose), but there are
apparently all sorts of errors in it, at least in the origins of the
star names.

--
Brian Tung
The Astronomy Corner at http://astro.isi.edu/
Unofficial C5+ Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/c5plus/
The PleiadAtlas Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/pleiadatlas/
My Own Personal FAQ (SAA) at http://astro.isi.edu/reference/faq.html

SunSeeker wrote:
snip
Just what was the state of mind when they projected these images in
space and time? . . . .[O]ne really has to wonder what was going on.

For a good tracing of historical evolution of the named-constellations
from the Sumerian, Bablyonian, Egyptian and Greek and Greco-Roman, see:


Evans1998: Evans, James. 1998. The History and Practice of Ancient
Astronomy. Oxford Univ. Press. 1998hpaa.book.....E
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/np...paa.book.....E

Most of the northern-western civilization constellations were defined
by the Sumerian's and Bablyonian's. Oph's association with medicine is
a good case on point. Designations and their associated mythology
were changed by later civilizations.

The Greco-Roman constellations and their mythology reflected the
central values of their culture based on their limited scientific
understanding at the time. Although the Greeks developed modern
philosphy and its emphasis on reason and Wisdom, they strongly believed
in the chaotic nature of physical world. The abstracted that
experience of the randomness of the natural world into a series of
capricious and arbitrary Gods who could destroy a person's life on a
whim, e.g. Zeus. The archtypeal man of strength was seen as the ideal
to navigate that world, e.g. Hercules. Thus, Greek constellation
mythology is centered around stories about the "gods" or "fates"
committing a series of fairly heinous and capricious acts against
mortals. The Greek constellation myths are so violent - they are filled
with rape and pediophilial - that it is difficult to give an honest
appraisal of the Greek constellations stories in educational
presentations targeted towards school age children. Guess the Greek's
worldview fits with a culture filled with war and disease and where the
average life span ended in your early to mid 30s.

Our modern culture also projects its cultural values onto the night
sky.

This western view of the heavens held sway until the 1700s when Lacille
ventured south and started naming southern constellaions in a part of
sky not visible to northern observers and Hevelius filled in some
northern constellations. Those later designations added constellation
mythology appropriate for the pre-industrial age of enlightenment -
then modern industrial tools, e.g. Sextans - the Sextant, Fornax - the
furnance of metal forge, Reticulum - the reticle.

In our post-industrial society, the official constellations of the
International Astronomical Union, adopted I believe in the 1930s,
represents the values of our modern scientific age. The IAU
constellations are simply boundaries or regions in the sky without the
stick figures of the constellations. This reflects our modern
scientific understanding that the arrangement of the constellations are
simply meaningless, random optical alignments of stars at various
distances or physical associations of stars in moving streams (UMa and
Haydes).

snip
Does anyone here that is an observer actually know the Greek mythology
about what they look at or even care? I don't much. Maybe I should.

Yes, you should. It recapitulates the western cultural tradition, and
is a fun way to learn about the night sky.

- Canopus56

P.S. - I developed a website that has 3-D VRML renderings of some of
the stars in some key constellations. You'll have to allow the Cortona
VRML ActiveX plug-in for MS-IE or Netscape Navigator to run inorder to
view them.

3D Cas (RA 0h) - Blue | Leo (RA 11h) - Green (Partial) (VRML)
http://members.csolutions.net/fisher...eo_Cortona.htm

3D Per (RA 3h) - Blue | Her (RA 12h) - Green (Partial) (VRML)
http://members.csolutions.net/fisher...er_Cortona.htm

3D Cet (RA 3h) - Blue | Aql (RA 19h) - Green (Partial) (VRML)
http://members.csolutions.net/fisher...ql_Cortona.htm

3D Tau (RA 4h) - Blue | Oph (RA 17h) - Green (Partial) (VRML)
http://members.csolutions.net/fisher...au_Cortona.htm

3D Orion (RA 6h) - Blue | Boo (RA 14h) - Green (Partial) (VRML)
http://members.csolutions.net/fisher...oo_Cortona.htm

3D Gem (RA 7h) - Blue | Cyg (RA 19h) - Green (Partial) (VRML)
http://members.csolutions.net/fisher...yg_Cortona.htm

3D UMa (RA 12h) - Blue | Dra (RA 18h) - Green (Partial) (VRML)
http://members.csolutions.net/fisher...Ma_Cortona.htm

in project:

http://members.csolutions.net/fisher...efProject.html

"SunSeeker" wrote in message news:vDJrg.43865$B91.21034@edtnps82...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13759892/


Does anyone here that is an observer actually know the Greek mythology
about what they look at or even care?

I don't know but am curious enough to read E.C. Krupp's
monthly column in S&T.
--

Hilton Evans
---------------------------------------------------------------
Lon -71° 04' 35.3"
Lat +42° 11' 06.7"
---------------------------------------------------------------
Webcam Astroimaging
http://mysite.verizon.net/hiltonevan...troimaging.htm
---------------------------------------------------------------
ChemPen Chemical Structure Software
http://www.chempensoftware.com

My grandmother born 1893 was a mathematician, early astronomer, and an
excellent historian trained in the classics. All phD candidates had to know
the
classical mythological origins of the major (northern) constellations, so they
in
turn could teach the same to their students. Greek and Latin were required.
WWII brought me to her home to be raised by her. We used to sit out summers
listening to Gram reciting the various mythological backgrounds not just of
the constellations but stars, planets, Babylonian, Greek, and Roman mythology
.....
and even some north American Indian astro myths. It was a shame in one respect

because I was not a very good student. But I loved hearing it, over and over
again
through the years growing up. Listening to her talk was almost like music. It
was a
kind of music!

.....


SunSeeker wrote:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13759892/

Does anyone here that is an observer actually know the Greek mythology
about what they look at or even care? I don't much. Maybe I should. Just
what was the state of mind when they projected these images in space and
time? To most, these are just names of obvious patterns of stars but when
you actually see the whole constellation with a picture, one really has to
wonder what was going on.

Dale Gombert wrote:

There must be dozens of books on the topic, but another outstanding
reference is "Star Names: Their Meaning and Lore" by Richard Hinckley
Allen.

Brian Tung responded:

It's a fun little read (or a fun big read, I suppose), but there are
apparently all sorts of errors in it, at least in the origins of the
star names.

Richard Hinkley Allen was a typical gifted dilettante of his times. His
knowledge of the Classics (Greek and Roman) was first-hand and pretty
reliable, but his discussion of non-Western traditions is drawn from
second-hand and third-hand sources which he did not understand
very well, and which were themselves infused with hazy nineteenth-
century romanticism. So everything that he says about non-Western
astronomy -- including, critically, the Arab tradition that gave birth
to
modern European astronomy -- has to be taken with many grains of
salt. Having said that, Allen's enthusiasm is infectious, and the fact
that he even tried to include non-Western cultures is laudable.

One might also view Allen as the central myth-maker of modern
star-lore. His pronouncements are found throughout discussions
of star lore, from Burnham to Ridpath, and even in writings by
Arabic and Indian scholars who ought to know better. It's too bad
that so many of them are demonstrably incorrect, while others
that are based on a long chain of tenuous speculation are simply
accepted as fact.

The central myth that has been perpetrated by people from Allen
to H.A. Rey is that they are uncovering a forgotten tradition. Back
in the good old days, goes this story, even the most ignorant
peasant knew hundreds of stars by name, and had a rich store
of lore about each one. Actually, there's not the slightest reason
to believe that this is true. On the contrary, star lore is probably
more popular today than it ever was before -- among the Greeeks,
among the native Americans, among the ancient Mesopotamians.
It's unlikely that the average peasant could have identified the
average second-magnitude star if you had pointed it out to him,
let alone given it a name or told you what constellation it was in.

- Tony Flanders

Guess the Greek's
worldview fits with a culture filled with war and disease and where the
average life span ended in your early to mid 30s.

That's a problematic statement, because modern astronomy was
forged in an era of war, disease, and short life spans. Newton had
the leisure to develop his theories because he had retired to the
countryside to escape the plague. The Copernican theory became
a batting ball in the war between Protestantism and Catholicism
that decimated the population of Europe. Herschel went to England
to escape war in Germany. And so on.

As for the Greek myths, they arose in pre-literate times. Most of
them had settled into more or less their current form at the time
of Homer and Hesiod, right at the dawn of what we now think of
as Classical civilization. That was nearly a millennium before
Ptolemy, who codified Classical astronomy. And a very busy
millennium too, full of radical innovation. Lumping Ptolemy and
Homer together is just as valid or invalid as lumping Einstein
and Chaucer together.

It also seem pretty clear that in most cases, Greek myths were
grafted onto the constellations at a fairly late date. The Greeks
enjoyed telling those stories because they're rollicking good yarns,
full of sex and violence, just like their counterparts in the 21st
century. But most Greeks and Romans -- at least in the educated
classes -- didn't take them very seriously. And there's no reason
to think that *anybody* in Greece considered the constellation
myths to be anything more than mnemonic devices.

- Tony Flanders