Week of May 7-13, 2023

Just about every indigenous culture on Earth developed a set of constellations in their sky. Those that we in the West recognize today are mostly those created by the ancient Greek and early European explorers. These cover the entire celestial sphere and represent objects, animals and people from mythological stories.

Occasionally, however, we encounter a constellation that's associated with a real person, and if we look skyward shortly after dark this week we can see one such example.

High in the northeastern sky you'll easily spot the Big Dipper, itself not a constellation, but rather an "asterism" — a group of stars that looks like something familiar. Follow the Dipper's handle away from its bowl, and you will encounter the bright yellowish-orange star Arcturus and, eventually, the bluish-white star Spica in the southeast.

It is within the arc formed by these three celestial points that we find the small faint constellation known as Coma Berenices, which represents the beautiful amber hair of the ancient Egyptian Queen Berenice II, the wife of Ptolemy III (also known as Ptolemy Euergetes).

The story of Coma Berenices tells that Ptolemy waged a long war against the Assyrians to avenge the murder of his sister. To honor his safe return, Ptolemy's wife Berenice had her beautiful tresses ceremoniously clipped and laid out on the temple altar to present to Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty (now seen in the western evening sky as the glistening planet Venus).

Later that evening, however, someone discovered that the hair was missing. To prevent a terrible panic, the astronomer Conon of Samos proclaimed that Aphrodite had graciously accepted the gift and that she had honored the beautiful hair with a place in the heavens.

And, sure enough, we can now see it there in the sky — right where Aphrodite placed it so many centuries ago.

While the story of Berenice's hair is old, the constellation itself is relatively new; in fact, it wasn't even created until the 16th-century Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe sketched it on his sky maps.

The brightest star in this constellation is known as Beta Comae, about 1.5 times larger, and more than three times more luminous than our sun. It appears quite faint in our sky, however, since it lies nearly 30 light years away.

Today, astronomers recognize that Coma Berenices contains a star cluster visible as a hazy cloud of stars. If you have a dark, un-light-polluted sky, aim binoculars in its direction and you'll easily see more than three dozen stars making up the beautiful open cluster known as the Coma Star Cluster. At a distance of 270 light years, this swarm is one of the nearest to Earth.

Though the constellation is small and faint, it is quite a fertile region for stargazers with optical help. At least eight galaxies beyond our own Milky Way appear in this direction, and all are well within range of small backyard telescopes.

During the next month or so, Coma Berenices will appear higher in the early evening sky, so be sure to get out and search for this delicate and beautiful stellar tribute to Egypt's Queen Berenice II!