The Heart of Charles

Astron­omy rarely imposes its polit­i­cal beliefs on the stars. Most stars have alphanu­mer­i­cal des­ig­na­tions, not names. The goal is to be objec­tive. The uni­verse is mute to human social prob­lems and history.

Sci­ence attempts to under­stand the uni­verse, not to impose human foibles upon it. There are, of course, notable excep­tions. Humans love to name things, and the star “alpha” in the con­stel­la­tion Canes Venatici proves that names have an impor­tant emo­tional effect on the way we see our universe.

Alpha has a more pop­u­lar name — Cor Car­oli, the Heart of Charles. It shines brightly near the Big Dip­per in one of the sky’s more obscure con­stel­la­tions, Canes Venatici, the Hunt­ing Dogs. Around 10 p.m., look for the Dip­per high in the north­east­ern sky. To the left of the Dipper’s han­dle, find a flat tri­an­gle of stars. The mid­dle (and bright­est) star of the tri­an­gle is Cor Caroli.

The star is about 120 light years dis­tant (about 720 tril­lion miles), which puts it in our galac­tic neigh­bor­hood. The sur­prise comes when it is viewed in a small tele­scope. Cor Car­oli is not one star, but two. Near the bright star you see is a much dim­mer com­pan­ion, mak­ing Cor Car­oli a dou­ble, or binary, star. The stars are sep­a­rated from one another by about 75 bil­lion miles. Even at that dis­tance, their grav­i­ta­tional attrac­tion to each other causes them to be caught in a slow cos­mic dance. They orbit one another every 10,000 years.

The main star shines 50 times more brightly than our sun and has about three times more stel­lar mate­r­ial. Even the dim com­pan­ion has six times the bright­ness and nearly twice the mass of the sun.

The Charles in ques­tion is England’s Charles I, one of that nation’s most vil­i­fied and praised mon­archs. He was thrown from power in 1647 after a long civil war between the Roy­al­ists, who sup­ported him, and the Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, led by a staunchly fun­da­men­tal­ist reli­gious sect called the Puri­tans. Per­haps you’ve heard of them. They had a bit to do with Amer­i­can his­tory, as well.

The Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans declared a repub­li­can form of gov­ern­ment deeply grounded in Puri­tan moral­ity. On Jan. 30, 1649, hav­ing blamed the for­mer king for all the death and destruc­tion of the war, the Com­mon­wealth lopped off the head of the unfor­tu­nate for­mer monarch.

The Com­mon­wealth lasted only 11 years. Polit­i­cal insta­bil­ity, repres­sive reli­gious intol­er­ance, and strict, “puri­tan­i­cal” laws gov­ern­ing human behav­ior char­ac­ter­ized its rule. (Yes, that’s where we get the word “puri­tan­i­cal.”) In 1660, Charles II, son of the mar­tyred king, returned from exile to Eng­land, and the monar­chy was restored.

And so it was that on May 29 of that year, Charles II returned to Lon­don in tri­umph. That night, Sir Charles Scar­bor­ough, per­sonal physi­cian to Charles II, went out­side to look up as the stars shone beau­ti­fully under vel­vet black skies. The star alpha in Canes Venatici seemed to shine more bril­liantly than he had ever seen, as if it were the heart of the dead king swelling with pride at his son’s restora­tion to the throne.

By 1673, the accep­tance of that des­ig­na­tion was so wide­spread that Eng­lish stel­lar car­tog­ra­pher Fran­cis Lamb iden­ti­fied the star as Cor Car­oli Regis Mar­tyris — the Heart of Charles, the Mar­tyred King. Much has changed since those days. In places like Eng­land, the peo­ple, and not polit­i­cal or reli­gious tyrants, rule. Against the flow of his­tory, the monar­chy in Eng­land still sur­vives, more sym­bol than real­ity. And yet the Heart of Charles still swells against the vel­vet black­ness of the night.

Plan­ets

Bright Jupiter is low in the west­ern sky dur­ing deep evening twi­light. You’ll need a clean west­ern hori­zon to see Jupiter. Even brighter Venus is above it. Above them both is a pretty, naked-eye star clus­ter called the Pleiades, or Seven Sis­ters. Venus will pass right through the Pleiades dur­ing the evening of April 3. After that, Venus will rise above the Sisters.

By 10 p.m., ruddy Mars is high in the SSE in Leo. Sat­urn is just peek­ing over the south­east­ern hori­zon. Look for it to the left of the bright star Spica in the con­stel­la­tion Virgo.

Tom Burns is direc­tor of Ohio Wes­leyan University’s Perkins Obser­va­tory in Delaware, Ohio, and he’s glad to hear from you. Email him at tlburns@owu.edu.

Posted by Tom Burns on Apr 1 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.