When we face southeast at this time of year and look up we see just a few dim stars and no obvious group to connect to form a stick figure.看 So why did the ancients create the faint constellation Pisces (PIE-sees), the Fishes, in this part of our sky?看
They had observed that our Sun does not move randomly across the sky but rather it follows the same path year after year against the same background stars.看 After many years of observing and recording they came to realize that it takes about 360 days for our night sky to start to repeat itself.看 They had also observed that it takes about 30 days for our Moon to start to repeat itself.看 It appears that they wanted to use the night sky as a calendar for the seasons and to track the path of our Sun.看 They figured out that it took about 12 cycles of our Moon to produce one cycle (year) of our night sky.看 It seemed natural to organize or break the path of our Sun into 12 parts or months (Moonths).看 One way to do that was to form 12 groups of stars, constellations, along the path and to make up stories about them.看 If the apparent path of our Sun did not pass through the region of the dim stars of Pisces then the constellation and stories of Pisces probably would never have been created.看 Pisces was considered by our ancient ancestors as the last or 12th constellation in the Zodiac, the circle of animals.看 Hipparchus (190-120 BC) is credited with inventing the first map of our sky.看 All maps must have an Origin or (0,0) point from which to start or from which to measure everything else.看 Hipparchus decided to use the Vernal Equinox as the (0,0) point and at that time the Vernal Equinox was in the constellation, Aries, the Ram.看 Consequently Aries was considered to be the first constellation and from there our Sun appears to move through Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpius, Sagittarius, Capricornus, Aquarius, and finally Pisces.看 In the graphic you can see that the Vernal Equinox now resides in Pisces.看 Over the last 2,000 years the Vernal Equinox has slowly moved from Aries into Pisces.看 This slow movement of the Vernal Equinox to the west is due to what is called precession.看 Perhaps it was noticed by our most ancient ancestors but by creating the first map of our sky, Hipparchus is credited with being the first to document this phenomenon but he had no explanation for it.看 No one knew what caused precession until Isaac Newton explained it in 1687 as being a result of the combination of our Sun and Moon’s gravity causing our Earth’s north-south axis to ’續wobble’ very slightly over a very long time span.看 The Vernal Equinox will continue to drift westward through the other constellations on the Zodiac and it will get back to Aries in about 24,000 years.看
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From a Greek myth we are told Aphrodite, goddess of love, and Eros, her son, were being pursued by the monster Typhon and they jumped into the Euphrates River to escape.看 They changed themselves into fishes and tied their tails together with ribbons to keep from getting separated before they swam to safety.看 In the graphic, the star Al Rischa is 'The Knot' where the ribbons holding the two fishes are tied together.
If you are out around the time of your late local news, look just a little north of east and you might see bright orange-ish Mars above the horizon.看 Once again Earth is closing in on or catching up with Mars.看 It appears to be getting bigger and brighter as it rises a little earlier each night. Make a mental note of the nearby stars and you will observe that Mars is moving very slowly toward the east relative to those nearby stars.看 By November 15 Mars will appear to have stopped that movement and it will appear to move toward the west until January 30, 2008.看 This was a great mystery for our ancient ancestors who assumed our Earth did not move.
Next week we will locate the constellations Triangulum and Aries, the Ram.
Clear skies.
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