Skywise Unlimited

The constellation Fornax is one those created by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in the mid 1700’s to commemorate the enlightenment’s greatest hits. It represents the little furnaces that chemists use in the laboratory to cook things you shouldn’t eat. I’m sure you can order one on Amazon or maybe talk to your local meth dealer. […]

The constellation of Gemini represents the twin sons of Jupiter, whose names are Castor and Pollux. Those two boys are also represented by the bright stars that are drawn as the heads of the figures when you connect the dots. Ptolemy added Gemini to his maps a couple of thousand years ago when he was […]

The constellation Grus represents a crane. Please note that we mean the large gangling-legged fish-eating bird, not the big load-lifting construction machine. We’re basically talking three stars here so you can sketch just about anything with a bit of imagination. The brightest stars are named after parts of a fish because the area was carved […]

Hercules is a major constellation and its story goes all the way back to when the ancient Greeks did a major reboot of Gilgamesh. Ptolemy included Hercules in his collection a couple thousand years ago which is how I heard about it. Hercules was a magnificent bastard. His father was a god which right away […]

The constellation Horologium represents a clock and usually is portrayed as one of the old-timey types. Nicolas Louis de Lacaille created it and drew it as a grandfather hall clock with a pendulum and weights. Lacaille added 14 constellations to the map in an effort to flesh out the southern sky. In general he used […]

The largest of all 88 constellations is called Hydra, the water snake. It’s huge. It forms a line that wraps around the sky all the way from the stars of Cancer to those of Libra. If you go out and see the toothy business end just starting to rise in the east, you will wait […]

There is a southern constellation called Hydrus which is not to be confused with the constellation Hydra. They are both water snakes but Hydrus is the lesser water snake in both size and mythical importance, and also it is male. Having two slithering sky serpents confirms the old adage that “snakes travel in pairs” which […]

The source of the name for the constellation Indus is a bit confusing. Many say it celebrates the indigenous tribes of the Americas. But there is some indication it originally referred to tribes in Madagascar. There are also indications it’s about the tribes of the East Indies, or maybe Africa. Petrus Plancius added it to […]

There is a small constellation near Cassiopeia which looks like her but is a smaller “W” shape. It is Lacerta, which means lizard. It is considered part of the Perseus Group even though there is no lizard in that story. Johannes Hevelius named it in the late 1600’s, I guess because it just sounded cool […]

The constellation Leo shows up in the early spring, when frogs wake up, the crocuses start blooming, and pudgy old guys begin meandering around Lowes in cargo shorts and birkenstocks. These stars dominate the spring sky the way Orion dominates the winter. In the weeks before the equinox Leo begins leaping up from the eastern […]

There is a constellation called Leo Minor that represents a lesser lion, just north of regular Leo. Johannes Hevelius added it in 1687. He sort of squeezed it in between Leo and the Big Dipper where there was a bit of unoccupied interstitial space. It’s like how Idaho was formed from the leftover region created […]

The constellation of Libra represents a set of scales and it is by far the newest of the zodiacal membership. It may seem odd that there is a machine for weighing stuff in the weird line-up of monsters and zoo critters. On the other hand its two brightest stars have my most favorite star names; […]