Leo, and I ain’t Lion

Every time I see the con­stel­la­tion Leo, the Lion, rise majes­ti­cally in the north­east, I think of a lit­tle poem by the French poet Guil­laume Apollinaire:

O lion, mourn­ful image

Of kings sadly brought down,

You are born now only in cages

In Ham­burg, among the Germans.

The lion has always sym­bol­ized to human­ity regal power and free­dom, yet it is now an endan­gered species, brought down by the growth of civ­i­liza­tion and the shrink­ing of its habitat.

The con­stel­la­tion Leo is some­what the same — slowly fad­ing from the sky because of night­time light­ing. But while it still shines brightly, we can get an under­stand­ing of why the lion has always meant so much to human­ity and why the ancients hon­ored it with a place in the sky.

Look for Leo low in the east­ern sky. It can be found by first find­ing the Big Dip­per, high in the north­east­ern sky. Next locate the two stars that form the front of the bowl of the dip­per. Extend the line between those two stars to the east, and you’ll run right into Leo’s back.

An arc of five bright stars called the Sickle forms his head and front paw. It looks a bit like a back­ward ques­tion mark. The bot­tom or south-most star in the Sickle is called Reg­u­lus, which forms his front paw.

Reg­u­lus didn’t get its name until the 16th cen­tury. Accord­ing to Richard Allen, the great astronomer Coper­ni­cus named it. Reg­u­lus means “lit­tle king,” for surely Leo is the king of beasts. In many cul­tures it is called the lion’s heart, and it is always taken to be a por­tent of kingly power, fame, and wealth.

Due east of the sickle is a right tri­an­gle of stars that form Leo’s hindquar­ters. The bright star far­thest east in the tri­an­gle is called Denebola, which means “lion’s tail” in the orig­i­nal Arabic.

Leo has always had great reli­gious and cul­tural sig­nif­i­cance. I’ve heard it said that to the ancient Hebrews, Leo is the lion that is the sym­bol of the tribe of Judah.

Leo is almost cer­tainly the lion that Her­cules was asked to slay as one of his twelve labors. Later in the evening, as Leo reaches its high­est point in the south­ern sky and slowly begins to descend to the west, Her­cules begins to rise in the north­east, pur­su­ing the lion for­ever across the dome of night.

Leo and Her­cules must be enjoy­ing them­selves immensely. To be chased for­ever and never to be caught! The plea­sure of the hunt is in the pur­suit and not the victory.

The old heroes are almost gone, lost to time and neglect. Gone are Orion, Perseus and Jupiter, replaced by more down-to-earth heroes like Rambo and East­wood and Schwarzeneg­ger. But they are memo­ri­al­ized in the stars and will not be lost forever.

Their deeds are remem­bered every time we look up at the sky because they rep­re­sent human needs and mem­o­ries so pow­er­ful that even the pas­sage of time can­not, must not, erase them entirely.

You must know these things. A time will also come when the last lion paces ner­vously in some zoo. Then the species will be gone for­ever, save for the indeli­ble mark that it has left upon the stars. As long as the stars still shine, chil­dren will look up at them and ask, “What is that?” And you must reply, “A lion, a noble and beau­ti­ful beast that once lived in Africa but now treads only among the stars.”

Evening plan­ets

We’ve been get­ting a lot of calls at Perkins about the two bright “stars” vis­i­ble in evening twi­light right now. For heaven’s sake, check them out. You’re look­ing at Venus low in the west and Jupiter up and to the left. They are the bright­est objects in the night­time sky besides, of course, the moon. Get your kids out there and show them. It’s quite the view.

Tom Burns is direc­tor of Ohio Wes­leyan University’s Perkins Obser­va­tory in Delaware and he’s glad to hear from you. He can be reached at tlburns@owu.edu.

Posted by Tom Burns on Feb 27 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.