Cassiopeia

The myth

Cassiopeia was a queen who boasted that she and her daughter were lovelier than the sea nymphs. That insult set off the whole chain of events behind Perseus and Andromeda. As punishment she was tied to her throne and set circling the pole forever, so for half of every night she hangs upside down.

How to find it

Cassiopeia is one of the easiest shapes in the sky, a bright W, or an M depending on the hour, made of five stars. It sits on the opposite side of Polaris from the Big Dipper, so when one rides high the other hangs low, and between them they circle the pole all night without ever setting. It is highest on autumn evenings in the northern hemisphere, and from the southern hemisphere it is hidden or very low.

The queen on her chair

The five stars of the W are her throne and body. The old star names are Arabic and mostly describe the figure. Schedar, the brightest, comes from a word for the breast, and Caph is a hand, part of an older Arabic picture of a hand stained with henna. The middle star of the W, Gamma Cassiopeiae, has no classical name at all, and it is a strange, restless star that brightens and fades without warning.

Two stars that appeared from nowhere

Cassiopeia is famous for new stars. In November 1572 a brilliant point appeared here, rivalled Venus and stayed visible in daylight for weeks. The Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe measured it carefully and showed it did not shift against the background stars, so it had to be far beyond the Moon. That was a blow to the old belief that the starry sky could never change. We now know it was a supernova, a star blowing itself apart. The remains of a younger supernova, Cassiopeia A, are also here, though at most one astronomer may have recorded that explosion when its light arrived, and even that sighting is disputed.

Cassiopeia in astrology

Cassiopeia sits far from the Sun’s path and plays no regular part in birth charts. Ptolemy gave its stars the nature of Saturn and Venus, and Tycho’s star of 1572 was read by some astrologers of the time as a sign of great change in the world.

Common confusions

The W is not a zodiac pattern, and Cassiopeia is not where your birthday stars live. It is a circumpolar constellation, one that circles the pole, so it never sets from most of Europe, Canada and the northern United States. Look for it whenever the Big Dipper is hiding.