Valentine’s Day is coming and once again you’ll be trying to woo your beloved with something new and exciting.
Take your sweetheart to see the starry skies. If you can make it out of Everett and into the country, all the better.
Take a couple of lounge chairs (maybe just one if you really want to snuggle), blankets, something warm to drink and this column.
Constellations are pictures in the stars that help tell the great legends. Every culture has its own names and stories about the constellations. I love the Greek and Roman tales because they’re laced with love stories of all kinds. Two of the better celestial sagas of love are in the sky tonight.
One involves Cassiopeia and Cepheus, queen and king of ancient Ethiopia.
Cassiopeia is an easy constellation to spot. Just look early in the evening in the high northwestern sky for a bright upside down W. You can’t miss it.
Cepheus is a larger constellation but fainter than the queen. Look below Cassiopeia for what looks like a house with a really steep roof lying on its side.
Cassiopeia and Cepheus were so much in love that they vowed that they would never be separated. They would have lived happily ever after but Cassiopeia had a bit of vanity that got her in a lot of trouble.
The queen, a diva with an industrial-strength ego, was beautiful and she knew it. She never passed up a chance to brag of her beauty.
One evening she stepped outside on her castle balcony and shouted to the sky that she was even more beautiful than Hera, the queen of the gods on Mount Olympus.
Big mistake! Hera was so offended that she dove down from a cloud, tied Cassiopeia up in her throne, and pitched her high into the sky, forever banished from Earth.
When Cepheus heard of the fate of his dear wife, he recalled their vow never to be separated and appealed to Zeus, the king of the gods, to permit him to forever join his queen in the heavens.
At first Zeus was reluctant to grant his request because he also feared the wrath of Hera, but Cepheus, on his knees and sobbing, was too much for Zeus. He picked him up and shot him up into the sky in the direction of Cassiopeia, and to this day and night, the royal couple remain in a celestial love lock.
Another great story of love in the skies involves Orion the Hunter. You’ll see the outline of the great hunter rising diagonally above the southeast horizon as soon as darkness sets in. The three bright stars in a row make up his belt.
Orion was a reclusive but handsome man who hunted by night. As he chased down beasts he attracted the love and lust interest of Artemis, the goddess of the moon.
Night after night, her job was to lead a team of flying horses across the sky pulling a cart that contained the moon. One night she couldn’t resist it anymore. She abandoned the horses and the moon cart and joined her new boyfriend for a night of hunting and romance.
Toward dawn she leaped back to the reins of the moon cart and quickly finished her nightly track. This happened nightly, and Artemis’ father, Zeus, heard of this and was outraged.
Zeus arranged for a giant scorpion to fatally sting Orion during his daytime slumber. Orion awoke before the scorpion bit him and fought his attacker, but the giant scorpion managed to kill the hunter.
The next night, Artemis discovered her dead boyfriend, cried her eyes out, and then lifted his body high into the sky and magically transformed him into the bright constellation we see all winter long.
Keep watching the stars with the one you love. Early this week there’s a waning full moon to add to the romance. The rest is up to you.
Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis and author of the new book “Washington Starwatch,” available at bookstores and on his Web site, www.lynchandthestars.com.
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