Memorial Day weekend is considered by many as the start of the summer season, even though astronomically it doesn’t actually begin until June 20, the date of the summer solstice.
Who wants to wait that long to kick off summer? That’s why this Skywatch installment is all about one of the first summer constellations to show its face, Bootes.
It has several pronunciations. Most people say Boot-tees but I’ve also heard it pronounced boo-oat-tees, but no matter how you shake it, Bootes resembles a giant kite flying on its side in the high eastern sky.
Finding Bootes early in the evening is easy. Just look for the brightest star you can see in the high eastern sky. That’s Arcturus, not only the brightest star in Bootes, but the second brightest star we see in our entire night sky anytime of the year. I call it the “star of summer.”
If you need rock solid confirmation you’re seeing Arcturus, use the old stargazing rule “arc to Arcturus.” Look at the nearby Big Dipper and follow the curve of its handle beyond the end, and you’ll run right into Arcturus, which is at the tail of the giant sideways kite.
So to see the rest of Bootes just look to the left of Arcturus, and without too much trouble you should see the rest of the kite.
Arcturus has a distinctive orange glow to it, typical of stars classified as red giants. Even though Arcturus is 25 times the diameter of our sun, it’s only 1.5 times as massive. Arcturus is running out of hydrogen fuel at its core. When that happens, stars puff out into red giants. This will happen to our own sun in about 5 billion years. We’re looking at our future.
Arcturus is just about 37 light-years away (around 214 trillion miles). Believe it or not, that’s considered a nearby star. Arcturus is so far away that the light we see from it tonight left that star in 1971, when Richard Nixon was president.
As it is with most constellations, there are many mythological stories about how Bootes got in the sky. Probably the one that’s best known is about how Bootes, out of desperate poverty, invented a plow that could be pulled by oxen. Ceres, the goddess of agriculture, was so impressed with Bootes that when he died she transformed his body into a constellation. While he was alive, one of Bootes passions was hunting, so when he died, Ceres placed Bootes in the heavens and put him on an everlasting pursuit of the Big Bear, Ursa Major.
That’s a nice story, but the one I love is involves one of my heroes, Bacchus, the god of wine. In this tale, the constellation is identified with Icarius, proprietor of a large vineyard. Invited to inspect the grapes, Bacchus was so impressed that he revealed the secret of winemaking to him. Icarius immediately got all his friends together for the first wine-tasting party that quickly got out of hand.
Most of the guests passed out, and they all woke up the next day with massive hangovers. Not knowing about the intoxicating effects of wine, many of them thought that Icarius was trying to poison them. Before the first winemaker woke up that morning, his former friends took spears and rocks to him.
When Bacchus heard this, he took pity on Icarius and lifted him into the stars. So the next time you’re out there in the evening after dark, raise your glasses to the constellation Bootes — or Icarius.
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 members.tripod.com/everett_astronomy.
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