{"id":222,"date":"2011-05-15T00:00:30","date_gmt":"2011-05-15T00:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/?p=222"},"modified":"2011-05-14T20:24:04","modified_gmt":"2011-05-14T20:24:04","slug":"mays-morning-zoo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/15\/mays-morning-zoo\/","title":{"rendered":"May’s morning zoo"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>SkyCaramba astronomy blog for the week ending May 21, 2011<\/em><\/p>\n

The dance at dawn continues during the next week with Venus a little left of Mercury, Jupiter above them, and Mars below. By the weekend of the 21st<\/sup>, Jupiter will appear high above Venus and Mercury. Venus and Mercury will have swooped down to meet Mars. If you\u2019re up while it\u2019s still fairly dark, you might as well take a look around. There\u2019s a zoo up there!<\/p>\n

A little above our four planet meeting is an arrangement of four stars called the Great Square. They form the body of Pegasus, the winged horse of ancient (and not so ancient) legends.<\/p>\n

The image of a winged horse has captured imaginations for thousands of years. Such is found on objects from ancient Greek archeological sites, in art from the Middle Ages, and in corporate logos and advertising campaigns today. Storytellers of long ago were right in ways they couldn\u2019t have imagined when they said Pegasus is immortal.<\/p>\n

In the Pegasus legend, the winged horse emerged after a warrior killed Medusa. Drops of Medusa\u2019s blood mixed with sea foam to become the winged horse. Wherever Pegasus clopped a foot to the ground, water burst forth. The horse is said to have created the fountain of Hippocrene on Mt. Helicon that way. The Muses revered the fountain as giving inspiration to any poet who drank from it.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s another horse nearby, and you\u2019ll have to be up before dawn\u2019s light to see it. It\u2019s called Equuleus. One of the legends says it\u2019s Pegasus\u2019s brother. Not much has been written about Equuleus over the millennia because it\u2019s such a dim and small constellation.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not hard to look at Delphinus and see the curved shape of a dolphin. And Aquila looks a lot like an eagle with its wings spread. If you\u2019ve ever seen a swan in flight, Cygnus appears aptly named. It\u2019s still good as the Northern Cross.<\/p>\n

On one side of the swan is Vulpecula, the wolf. It\u2019s a modern constellation, created in the 1600s. It has the distinction of being home to the first discovered pulsar. On the other side of the swan is Lacerta, the lizard, also from the 1600s. You didn\u2019t know there were any reptiles up there, did you?<\/p>\n

Getting back to where we started, the four planets we\u2019ve been watching this month are in Pisces. That\u2019s the Latin plural for fish. There are two: the north fish and the south fish. (Don\u2019t confuse the south fish of Pisces with the constellation Southern Fish or Piscis Austrinus.) Many ancient cultures associated these stars with fish, although some saw just one fish in them. In another month, you\u2019ll get a better view of Pisces before dawn.<\/p>\n

While you\u2019re watching the animals above, watch out for the animals below. At these early hours, it\u2019s a good idea to use insect repellant. And in some places, the real world counterparts to the animals in the sky could be hunting for a meal. Be sure to live to stargaze another night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Horses, fish, a wolf, an eagle, a dolphin, and even a lizard!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[117,121,118,119,131,129,128,125,5,113,124,25,4,120,114,89,116,123,130,17,115,126,127,122],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":231,"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222\/revisions\/231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}