Hercules powerful, even in stars

Published 2:53 pm Thursday, July 24, 2008

One of my favorite constellations of the summer is Hercules. While it’s not the brightest of constellations, it’s a large one, the fifth largest constellation of the sky.

I also love the Greek myth behind our stellar hero, and I love all the wonderful celestial treasures within it.

The best way to describe Hercules is to picture a giant fancy handwritten “H” in the sky. Obviously, that seems appropriate. See if you can spot that fancy “H” high in the southern sky.

The best thing to do is go out about 10 p.m. this week, face due south and crank your head all the way up to the overhead zenith. That “H” will be near the zenith.

Granted, this will not be an easy task, especially if you’re dealing with any kind of urban or suburban lighting, but give it a shot. Even if you don’t see the entire “H,” I know you should be able to spot a trapezoid made up of four moderately bright stars.

This is known as the keystone. It’s the area where the two sides of the “H” join together. This “H” is supposed to outline the figure of Hercules, hanging upside down. Good luck with that one!

The legend of Hercules is twisted and complex, but I’ll try my best to boil it down for you. Hercules was the son of Zeus, king of the gods, and Alcmene, one of the many mortal women whom Zeus was seeing on the side. Hera, Zeus’ wife, was understandably upset by this birth, and upsetting Hera was something you never wanted to do. She lived for revenge.

Hercules grew up to be a giant of a man, settled down, got married and had a lot of kids. He was a super family man who always had a big smile on his face.

Even after all these years, Hera was still very upset that Hercules even existed, and she was determined to make his life miserable. What she did was beyond hideous. She put a spell on him that forced him to murder his wife and all his kids. When he snapped out of the spell he was so full of unimaginable remorse and guilt that he and threw himself at the mercy of King Eurystheus.

The good king saw that Hercules was truly, truly sorry for what he had done. Nonetheless he had to punish Hercules. He gave Hercules a series of 12 hard labors to atone for his crime. He had to kill a mighty lion that was terrorizing the land.

Hercules was also assigned the task of killing a diabolical multiheaded snake, which was no easy feat, because every time he cut off a head, it just grew back. He also captured a giant stag, took on wild monster birds, cleaned an amazingly filthy stable, and completed a number of other challenging labors.

King Eurystheus was astonished with all he accomplished and set Hercules free. The other gods and goddess were so impressed by Hercules’ bravery that they depicted his figure in the stars, but have him hanging upside down. In spite of his great works they just couldn’t forget his evil deed.

Within the constellation Hercules is one of the coolest things you’ll see with your telescope, even if your telescope isn’t all that big. It’s the great Hercules Cluster, astronomically known as M13. It’s what’s known as a globular, a spherical arrangement of thousands of old stars crammed in a relatively small space. I guarantee that’ll knock off your visual socks.

M13 is on the upper right side of the Hercules keystone. There are probably well over 100,000 stars crammed in an area about 870 trillion miles across, and this colossal cluster is more than 25,000 light-years away. (One light-year is nearly 6 trillion miles.)

When you first see it through your telescope it may appear as a fuzzy patch of light, but keep looking and keep focusing and you should see a few individual stars at the edge of the cluster.

Not far from the great Hercules Cluster is another wonderful globular cluster, M92, not quite as bright as M13 but still very, very nice.

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis and author of the book, “Washington Starwatch,” available at bookstores and at his Web site, www.lynchandthestars.com.

The Everett Astronomical Society welcomes new members and puts on public star parties. The Web site is www.everettastro.org.