More Bull about Jupiter

If any­one is expect­ing me to write about the Mayan apoc­a­lypse sup­pos­edly com­ing up on the Win­ter Sol­stice, Dec. 21, then you will be dis­ap­pointed. The sup­po­si­tion is so much bull that it isn’t worth the expen­di­ture of ink or elec­trons to dis­cuss. But speak­ing of bull, an event is occur­ring there that is wor­thy of observation.

I am, of course, refer­ring to Tau­rus, the Bull. Any­one who has taken a quick trip out­side on a clear evening lately has seen the planet Jupiter shin­ing brightly in the east.

These days, the planet is in the con­stel­la­tion Tau­rus, which is nicely placed just after sun­set in the south­east right now. Jupiter is perched right above the bull’s neck, a tableau made even stranger by the tra­di­tional depic­tion of Tau­rus. Only the Bull’s head, horns, and shoul­ders are rep­re­sented in the sky.

Also, the Bull is described as a heifer in some of the old star stories.

Jupiter’s pres­ence in Tau­rus is no sur­prise. Because the plan­ets orbit the sun, they slide along a band of con­stel­la­tions called the Zodiac. Jupiter takes about a dozen years to orbit the sun and thus about the same time mak­ing one pas­sage around the sky. The planet is bound to spend just under a year in Tau­rus before it moves on.

The ancients were unaware of the true motions of the plan­ets around the sun. Jupiter was the king of the gods. Pre­sum­ably, he could mean­der around the sky any way he wanted. Why does he spend so much time in Taurus?

One expla­na­tion con­sisted of Jupiter’s fre­quent mar­i­tal infi­deli­ties, despite the watch­ful eye of Juno, his right­fully jeal­ous wife. One omi­nous day he fell in lust with Io, the stun­ningly beau­ti­ful daugh­ter of the river god Ina­chos. Io couldn’t resist the charms of Jupiter’s power, which, as Henry Kissinger once said, is the most pow­er­ful of aphro­disi­acs. Still, Io had to be cau­tious. Juno could make pow­er­ful mis­chief for Io if she found out. Jupiter was not so squea­mish. Io was a priest­ess in Juno’s tem­ple, which added to the allure as far as Jupiter was concerned.

When Juno inevitably found out, she turned poor Io into a white heifer, a rela­tion­ship killer if there ever was one. Because she didn’t trust her phi­lan­der­ing hus­band even under these strange cir­cum­stances, she also instructed Argus, a giant with 100 eyes, to watch the impris­oned heifer. Argus made a good prison guard. Because a few of his eyes were always open, he didn’t get a whole lot of sleep.

Jupiter fig­ured the least he could do was to free Io from prison. He demurred at the thought of doing his own dirty work, so he send Mer­cury, the fleet-footed mes­sen­ger of the gods, to kill the huge, hairy insomniac.

This was no mean task. Argus lit­er­ally had eyes in the back of his head. In this case, light­ning speed tri­umphed over 20–20 vig­i­lance. Mer­cury lopped off the giant’s head before he knew what hit him.

Juno was furi­ous, of course, but she couldn’t do much to pun­ish her more-powerful hus­band. In one ver­sion of the myth, she con­tents her­self by plac­ing the slain giant’s 100 eyes in the sky as the tail of the con­stel­la­tion, Pavo, the Peacock.

In another ver­sion Io escapes to Egypt, where Jupiter returns her to human form. As repay­ment for her con­sid­er­able trou­bles, the god allows her to give birth to Epa­phus, a lovely daugh­ter who even­tu­ally becomes ruler of the Nile Valley.

In my favorite ren­di­tion of the story, Juno exacts a cer­tain mea­sure of revenge. Just as Io is freed from impris­on­ment, Juno sends a gad­fly to bedevil the heifer.

Io jumps into the sea to escape the annoy­ance. She tries to swim away, and she can be found in the sky immersed in the ocean up to her shoul­ders to this very day.

Despite his many flaws, Jupiter is, if noth­ing else, loyal to his fallen lovers. As he moves among the stars of the Zodiac, he is dri­ven occa­sion­ally to revisit the beauty of the con­stel­la­tion. And there is the ever-present Jupiter, perched these days on the heifer’s back.

Of course, astronomers no longer believe in Jupiter. The point of light we see is a ball of liq­uid hydro­gen and helium and not the grand deity of old. How­ever, rem­nants of the old believes remain. Binoc­u­lars reveal four, tiny points of light hud­dled around the planet. They are the four bright­est moons of the erst­while god. One of them is called Io, who still orbits the planet in fidelity to her lost love.

Tom Burns is the direc­tor of Perkins Obser­va­tory. He can be reached at tlburns@owu.edu.

Posted by Tom Burns on Dec 16 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.