So Andromeda was saved and became betrothed on the spot to Perseus. Perseus removed her severed head from his pouch and held it front of Cetus, petrifying him. Perseus was returning from a mission to slay the Gorgon Medusa, who had snakes for hair and whose hideous gaze turned the viewer to stone. Presently, Cetus emerged from the waves to swallow her.Īs Cetus approached, however, Perseus, the Hero appeared on the Winged Horse, Pegasus. So Andromeda was chained to a rock by the sea and left to her fate. To save Ethiopia, Cepheus followed the advice of the oracle of Ammon in Libya and chained his daughter, the princess Andromeda (now overhead) on the rocky shore as a sacrifice. Nobody was able to fight the monster, and there seemed to be no way to get rid of him. Neptune in turn, answered Cassiopeia's boasts by flooding the seacoast and sending a vicious sea monster (Cetus, sometimes also called the Whale) to ravage the land. Since the Nereides were goddesses and disliked being compared to a mere mortal princess, so they complained directly to Neptune. In our celestial soap opera, Cassiopeia had offended the sea god Neptune by boasting that her beauty rivaled that of the Nereides (sea nymphs). Rather than a king, he seems to resemble a church with a steeple or perhaps an Alpine ski lodge with a steep, snow-shedding roof.
It is a small constellation, with no bright stars, but just imagine going from a regal implement to a lowly lizard in the span of just eight years!Ĭassiopeia's husband was Cepheus, the King of Ethiopia, who during early November evenings seems upside-down. Today, those stars officially belong to the constellation of Lacerta, the Lizard, named in 1687 by the astronomer Johannes Hevelius. Not too far from Cassiopeia is a group of stars that once supposedly formed the obsolete constellation of the Scepter and the Hand of Justice, created by Augustin Royer in 1679. It wouldn't be the first time, incidentally, that a star pattern referred to as a scepter has been placed in this part of the sky. You could even embellish this scene a bit by pretending that the faint stars Kappa, 48 and 50 Cassiopeiae compose the Queen's scepter, hovering just above the Queen's head. Finally, a fifth magnitude star, Theta, not usually plotted on most popular star charts of this region of the sky, marks the Queen's chin. The bright star, Schedir would be the Queen's eye, while a nearby fainter fourth-magnitude star, Zeta, would mark her nose. The zigzag row of five bright stars would mark the outline of the Queen's crown. The face is best viewed as soon as it gets completely dark, about 90 minutes after local sundown, with Cassiopeia standing high in the northeast sky.
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