Celestial music

The ancients com­posed sto­ries around the con­stel­la­tions that reflected every human emo­tion. No set of con­stel­la­tion sto­ries is more mov­ing than those con­cern­ing Lyra, the lyre.

In August, Lyra can be found by look­ing straight over­head for Vega, one of the bright­est stars in the sum­mer sky.

Hang­ing down from Vega to the east is a small par­al­lel­o­gram of stars that rep­re­sents the body of the lyre. Vega is the neck of the instrument.

There are sev­eral inter­est­ing astro­nom­i­cal objects in Lyra within reach of binoc­u­lars or a small tele­scope. North­east of Vega, almost directly north of the par­al­lel­o­gram, is the naked-eye star Epsilon Lyra. In binoc­u­lars Epsilon turns into two stars. In a tele­scope at high mag­ni­fi­ca­tion, a sur­prise awaits. Each of the stars in Epsilon is itself dou­ble. They’re very close together, so you’ll need fairly high mag­ni­fi­ca­tion. Pop­u­larly called the Dou­ble Dou­ble, that group of four stars is one of the most spec­tac­u­lar multiple-star sys­tems in the sky.

Also in Lyra is the famous Ring Neb­ula — more on it next week.

The lyre is one of the most ancient of stringed musi­cal instru­ments. The Egyp­tians and Sume­ri­ans had them thou­sands of years before the birth of Christ. They were plucked or some­times bowed, usu­ally as accom­pa­ni­ment to the singing of songs and the telling of tales. What we call lyric poetry began as lyrics, songs that told the sto­ries of great heroes.

The lyre we see in the sky was made for Apollo, god of wis­dom and the arts ‚and given to Orpheus because of his great skill as a musician.

His story is one of great art, great sac­ri­fice and per­fect love.

Orpheus was deeply in love with Eury­dice, and she with him. But Eury­dice was bit­ten by a ser­pent and died. Orpheus’s love was so great that he deter­mined to go to the Under­world and res­cue her. Through the glo­ri­ous power of his art he was able to sing his way past the hor­ri­ble three-headed dog, Cer­berus, who guarded the gates to Hades.

At length, Orpheus played upon his lyre and sang of his love for Eury­dice to Pluto, the god of the Under­world. It must have been a glo­ri­ous song because even the god of death him­self was moved. Pluto allowed Eury­dice to leave Hades, but only on the con­di­tion that Orpheus should not look back on his beloved until they had both returned from the Under­world to the earth above.

But Orpheus’s love was too strong. Wor­ried, he looked back at Eury­dice just as they were about to reach the sur­face. Eury­dice was dragged back into Hades.

After­ward, Orpheus wan­dered the earth, singing his plain­tive love song, a song so sweet that the rocks and stones began to weep, until he finally died.

So why do we see the lyre, and not Orpheus, in the sky? The gods so loved Orpheus that they send him to the Under­world to be with his beloved. His lyre, the medium and sym­bol of his art, they put in the night sky. They placed it there to remind us that per­fect love, deeply felt, can tri­umph even over death, and that art and music can be the per­fect expres­sion of what is best about the human spirit.

Lyra shows up that the power of love and the power of art can do the impos­si­ble — if love is pure enough and its expres­sion through art is deeply enough felt.

Plan­ets

Sat­urn, Mars and the star Spica in the con­stel­la­tion Virgo are stacked up very close together in the WSW right now at the end of evening twi­light. You’ll need a per­fect west­ern hori­zon to see them, but what a view! Yel­low­ish Sat­urn is on top. Red­dish Mars is almost imme­di­ately below Sat­urn. Spica is below Mars.

The morn­ing plan­ets are just as spec­tac­u­lar and a lot eas­ier to see. At about 4:30 a.m., look low in the east for bright Jupiter to the left of the stars of Tau­rus the Bull’s head. The bright star to the right of Jupiter is Alde­baran, the red eye of the bull.

Now look down and to the left and wait for Venus to rise above the tree line as morn­ing twi­light begins.

Tom Burns is the direc­tor of Ohio Wes­leyan University’s Perkins Obser­va­tory, and he would be very happy to answer your ques­tions or sell you a ticket to one of its upcom­ing Friday-night pro­grams. He can be reached at tlburns@owu.edu or 740–363‑1257.

Posted by Tom Burns on Aug 12 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.