BEARS, BIBLES, DIPPERS & DRAGON

IOPNA looks to the north of Cancer, the 11th constellation of the ‘Mazzaroth’ (Zodiac):

 Aha!!...so the Great Bear mentioned in the Bible keeps Cancer company. There’s the Lesser Bear too, with Polaris on his tail.

Maybe…maybe not. 


Align top to west

What do you mean - may be not? Didn’t you say that “Arcturus with his sons” in Job 9 and 38 is generally accepted to be the Great Bear with its cubs?  That’s what all the translations and concordances say.

The King James Bible doesn’t say that - it just leaves it as Arcturus meaning ‘keeper of the bear’ - but the original Hebrew name was ash meaning ‘group’.                    

Huh??...there’s something wrong there.                

Where are the cubs anyway?...I can only see one…and have you ever seen polar bears with long tails like that?

Well no, I suppose not. You don’t think this is all based on mythology do you?

Well the story goes they‘ve got long tails because that’s how Zeus threw them up there!

Aw, sure!

So let’s take a close look at this name ‘Arcturus’.  The Greeks have apparently invented this, with arktikos in Greek meaning ‘bear’, hence arcticus in Latin from which we have ‘arctic’ in English. We have assumed the Bible’s Hebrew couldn’t mean the brilliant star in Bootes because the original name meant ‘group’ so it must refer to a constellation, obviously the Great Bear, while overlooking the mythology or any flaw.   However…..                                                                         
If we could take a bird’s eye view from the North Pole, of the 30 brightest stars in the heavens only 9 are north of the ecliptic line …and guess which is the brightest of those?                                                           

Not Arcturus in Bootes?  Is that the brightest star north of the ecliptic?

It sure is – Arcturus is the brightest of ‘the group’!...followed closely by Vega and Capella, then Altair, Pollux and 4 more. It was the first star ever seen in the daytime – in 1635.

Really? So Job highlights the starry southern sky as “the chambers of the south” then God reminds him of the northern constellations with: “Arcturus (Ash) with his sons”! That in itself was worth discovering!

God is thinking bigger than us….

…as usual!  Seeing mythology seems to have messed up the Redemption story at this point, can we briefly check what there is to see here?

In Ursa Major (Great Bear): the stars Alkaid, Mizar, Alioth, Megrez, Phad, Merak and Dubhe form the Big Dipper or Plough.  Mizar (2^nd last on the tail) is a quadruple star and has a twin, Alcor, which itself is a binary star….

…and together they make for the famous eyesight test known as ‘the horse & rider’ - once used by the Roman army!  

Now extend a line from Merak thru Dubhe on the bear’s flank leading direct to Stella Polaris marking the North Celestial Pole.                                          

Yes but apparently that hasn't always been the case; the Earth’s rotation shifted it from being marked by Thuben in Draco the dragon.
Interesting hey!?                                                                       

Polaris, Kocab, Pherkad and 2 other stars form the Little Dipper in Ursa Minor (Lesser Bear). At least that’s what they tell me – we might have a brilliant starry sky ‘downunder’ but we can’t see the Little Dipper.                                                                    

So we didn’t draw a complete blank after all. 
Of course we're going to get climate change if Earth's orbit precesses!                                      

Is there any other constellation associated with Cancer?

NEXT: Welcome aboard the ‘Argo’ - and don’t miss the comment below
 http://hotspuds.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/welcome-aboard-argo.html

 

 

Acknowledgements:   
Stellarium 
Wallace K, Dawes G, Northfield P, Astronomy Australia 2013, Quasar Publishing 
Photo credit: Egnorance.blogspot.com.au