Stardate: December 14, 2014 Many of the myths of ancient Greece sound like they were written for Hollywood. There’s beauty, mystery, and treachery, with enough nasty monsters to occupy passels of computer animators. One of the nastiest is Cetus, the sea monster, which crawls across the southern sky on December evenings. His story begins with Cassiopeia, the queen of Ethiopia. She was beautiful but vain — she bragged that she was the most beautiful of all. That didn’t sit well with the sea nymphs, who were also great beauties. They asked their father, Poseidon, to punish Cassiopeia for her boasting. He did, by sending Cetus to destroy Ethiopia. Cetus is often depicted as having the head and forelegs of a land creature, but the body of a sea serpent. And he was huge — big enough to destroy entire villages. The oracles told King Cepheus that the only way to save his kingdom was to sacrifice his daughter, Andromeda. So he ordered her to be chained at the shoreline as a sacrifice to Cetus. Just as the monster approached, though, Perseus, the hero, came to the rescue. Depending on which version of the tale you read, he either hacked the monster up, or turned him to stone with the head of Medusa, another nasty creature. Either way, Andromeda was saved, and Cetus was banished to the stars. The constellation is in the south and southeast at nightfall, and due south around 9 o’clock. It offers few bright stars, so you need dark skies to see this vanquished sea monster.
Posted on: Sun, 14 Dec 2014 14:46:19 +0000
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