Astrology Quarterly - Astronomy - Heavens Above

A S Morton

Heavens Above - January 2007

During the winter months centre stage in our night skies is taken by the mighty constellation of Orion flanked to the upper left and right respectively by the zodiac constellations of Gemini and Taurus, to the left and lower left by Canis Minor and Canis Major with Auriga the charioteer sitting overhead. They’ve taken pride of place up there for a while now but it’s really not so surprising, comprising as they do between them at least eight bright stars of the 1st magnitude. Facing south on a cold winter’s night the sky seems full of stars, stars of all different colours and brightness from the prominent red Aldebaran, the eye of the bull in Taurus, to the yellowy Capella in Auriga above, round to the orangey Pollux, one of the pair of celestial twins of Gemini, down to the brilliant white Sirius in Canis Major, the ‘Greater Dog’.

Sirius and Canis Major are quite low down in our northern skies so a fairly clear horizon is needed to get a good view of the full constellation. Sirius, however, is the very brightest of all the stars, to our eyes that is. This is because it is one of closest at just 8.6 light years away. That may sound a long way away but in terms of the distances of the twinkling stars it’s really not so far. The further south you go the clearer and more magnificent this whole area of sky becomes and why ancient civilisations saw this particular pattern as a big dog becomes a lot more obvious. Along with its smaller companion constellation Canis Minor, the ‘Lesser Dog’, further up a bit and slightly to the left whose bright star Procyon almost rivals Sirius (and can be quite easily mistaken for Sirius because being higher up in the sky it’s more easily visible) these two constellations were called the ‘watchdogs’ of the Milky Way, as represented by the ancient Egyptian sky-goddess Nut herself, and is the galaxy of which we are just one tiny speck, because its wispy, white body runs between the two.

To the ancient Egyptians Sirius was the most important star in the heavens, its heliacal rising (its first sighting in the pre-dawn skies after a period of 70 days of not being visible) heralding the annual flooding of the Nile river which irrigated the land and deposited the all-important nutrients from the dark silt which was left behind when the waters receded, vital nourishment indeed for the parched soil that initiated a new cycle of the planting of those life-sustaining crops, nature’s very own rebirth. The star Sirius (a Greek name) was associated with the ancient Egyptian goddess ‘Sopdet’ (Greco-Roman equivalent Sothis) and equated with the goddess Isis, deemed to be the immortal mother of the living king, whose earliest representation is as a seated cow with a plant between her horns. The cow is the archetype of motherhood, the seat is representative of the throne of Egypt and the plant is not only symbolic of new life but also of a new annual cycle, indeed this first sighting in the early morning skies of Sirius marked the beginning of the Egyptian year.

If Sirius is the bright eye of the ‘Greater Dog’ then to its right the star Mirzam is the dog’s nose or mouth and being more westerly it rises before Sirius and heralds Sirius’ imminent arrival. And its Arabic name Mirzam does in fact mean ‘The Announcer’.

Preceding these two in the unfolding skies, however, comes the rising up of the magnificent Orion, the most recognisable of all the night-time constellations. The asterism (the pattern of the stars) really does look like a giant of a man up there. The name Orion comes from the ancient Greeks and is most generally associated with the hunter of Greek myths wielding a club or sword above his head and fighting his eternal adversary the bull of Taurus, who has got his eye, Aldebaran, firmly fixed on blocking his path, whilst at the same time trying to escape the chasing Scorpion much further round in the skies such that as Orion sets in the west the constellation Scorpius will be rising in the east. Orion is highlighted by the blood-red star Betelgeuse in the top left, the brilliant blue-white Rigel bottom right and the familiar row of three stars marking his belt.

To the ancient Egyptians, however, Orion represented something entirely different. Sure, it’s a giant of a man but not just a fighting man, far from it. This is the god ‘Sah’, the personification of the “glorious soul of Osiris”, one of their most important deities. Osiris is the Egyptian ‘Lord of the underworld’ who is depicted as a mummy (the period of mummification is determined as being 70 days) with differing skin colours to illustrate his various associations with death (white flesh), new life, or rebirth (green), and with fertility (black, like the silt left behind from the inundation of the Nile). Most importantly, he is representative of the dead king and the father of the living one.

‘Sopdet’ (Sirius) unites with ‘Sah’ (Orion) to give birth to the male god ‘Soped’ and these three therefore parallel the divine trio of Isis, Osiris, and Horus respectively. According to the ancient Egyptian myth Horus is the child born of the union between the dead, mummified Osiris and his sister and wife Isis. As Isis spreads herself over the dead Osiris, often depicted with wings hovering over him, to breathe new life into him she somehow becomes impregnated by him, an ancient Egyptian miracle of conception that was perhaps later mirrored in our very own civilisation’s belief systems. The child that was born from this particular ‘immaculate conception’ is Horus, the falcon-headed god who was not only the “god of the sky” but whose earthly, human representation was the living king himself, the Pharaoh.

‘Soped’ (Horus) is “a star that was born from the union” of ‘Sopdet’ (Sirius, Isis) and ‘Sah’ (Orion, Osiris) but there is no one particular “star” that is clearly identified with ‘Soped’ (Horus), which seems puzzling. However, three of the visible planets were certainly associated by the ancient Egyptians with the sky-god Horus: Jupiter as “Horus who limits the two lands”, Saturn as “Horus, bull of the sky” and Mars as “Horus the red”.

But a very strange and amazing occurrence happens in the heavens above. In the part of the world that is Egypt, and particularly further south in what is called Upper Egypt, on Orion’s first appearance over the eastern horizon he seems to rise over the horizon almost feet first as if he is lying on his back. As Sirius begins to become visible over the horizon following along after Orion and the more fully Orion comes into view the more upright he becomes such that by the time Sirius and the constellation Canis Major are fully risen Orion has now adopted the familiar upright stance as if he has slowly stood up before our very eyes. It almost seems as if when Orion first appears it might be as the dead Osiris lying down but as Sirius (Isis) comes into view she breathes new life into Orion (Osiris) such that he is re-awakened, stirred into rebirth, resurrected.

And perhaps not simply re-born as himself but re-born in the form of his son and heir Horus. Before us stands the new-born, upright Horus, like the immortal form of the living king, the Pharaoh, standing like a giant god in the sky surveying all beneath him. To these ancient peoples that would have seemed such an awe-inspiring and reassuring, or perhaps even a fear-inducing, sight in their nightly skies, a giant god looking down on them, a giant in the skies looking just like their earthly king. No wonder the Pharaohs were worshipped as being of divine descent. Take a look up there one night, could that look like an ancient Egyptian Pharaoh?

Meanwhile, back to the here and now on planet Earth, our very own ‘magic roundabout’, and a look at what those ancient ‘wandering stars’, the planets, are up to in our heavens above.

Planetwatch - January 2007

At last some planets seem to be stirring in our early evening skies. We’ve had a few months with just the wondrous, twinkling stars to gaze at and with Saturn holding station as the lone watchman of the night but now Venus is beginning to show herself more fully as an evening star in the west just after sunset.

Mercury, having briefly dazzled us as a morning star (rising in the E before the Sun) at the back end of last year, now moves to superior conjunction (far side of the Sun as viewed from Earth) at the beginning of the new year, on the 7th of the month, and disappears from view. Lest we start to think that ‘out of sight is out of mind’, towards the end of the month he gingerly tip-toes out of the evening twilight in the southwest. He’s not quite ready yet for good viewing but by the end of the first week of February he certainly will be.

Venus, meanwhile, is putting on quite a show as a fabulous evening star in the southwest after the Sun has set. Rising higher in the early evening skies as the month progresses, by the end of the month she is setting some two hours after sunset, and there’s plenty more still to come!

Mars is keeping a very low profile in the dawn twilight, moving from the constellation Ophiuchus into Sagittarius.

Jupiter, already in Ophiuchus, is just above Antares (the ‘rival of Mars’), the bright red star of the constellation Scorpius, at the beginning of the month and rising in the southeast in the early hours of the morning.

Saturn enters stage left (in the E) just as Venus takes her bow and twirls off stage right (westward). The night skies are now his to command and just to make his status apparent for all to see he’s parked himself next to Leo’s primary star Regulus, just to the right of him, and is markedly the brighter of the two.

Uranus and Neptune are most certainly large gas-giant “planets” but they are not visible to the naked eye. That’s become an interesting little oddity once more, what with the reclassification of Pluto as a “dwarf planet”, and they would now seem to be in their own unique category again i.e. being “planets” but not being visible to us.

©A S Morton