Sky & Telescope - February 2024 - 45

Stories in the Stars by Stephen James O'Meara
The Cave of Zeus
Here are three new ways to see the brightest stars of Auriga.
Auriga is Latin for charioteer, but seeO
ur
story begins with the Pentagon
of Auriga and its lemon-yellow
beacon, zero-magnitude Capella, Alpha
(α) Aurigae, the sixth-brightest star
in the night sky. The Pentagon is an
asterism (a familiar pattern of stars)
formed by Auriga's five brightest stars.
As our all-sky chart on pages 42 and
43 depicts, in addition to Capella, the
geometric shape includes Beta (β), Eta
(η), Theta (θ), and Iota (ι) Aurigae and
borrows Beta Tauri from neighboring
Taurus. A fist held at arm's length will
fit comfortably inside the Pentagon's
vast celestial cavity. Factor in The Kids
(the tiny triangle of dim naked-eye stars
immediately southwest of Capella) and
the Milky Way, and we have a scene
worthy of contemplation.
Look again at our star chart. See how
Capella and the Pentagon are close to
the zenith (the imaginary point directly
overhead) for observers at mid-northern
latitudes. Such a lofty position seems
fitting for our story, which involves
Zeus, the supreme mythological deity
of ancient Greece. Let's set the stage for
our celestial drama.
TALE OF TRICKERY
In this illustration from
A. L. Millin's Galerie
Mythologique (1811),
Rhea is shown tricking
her husband Cronos
into receiving a stone
wrapped in swaddling
clothes in place
of Zeus, her last-born
child.
ing such a figure among the stars takes
a lot of imagination. For instance, one
common way to depict the constellation
involves a shepherd sitting in a chariot
(or wagon), holding three baby goats
while the mother goat watches over
them from the shepherd's shoulder. This
rendering is actually a fusion of figures
- a celestial collage, if you will, created
from fragments borrowed from different
story lines over the ages. No wonder a
simple Pentagon has become the constellation's
popular default pattern - it's
so much easier to visualize! But there are
at least three other, more inspired ways
to envision the stars of Auriga. Each is
based on a myth linked to the births of
both Zeus and the Milky Way.
The best-known story of the Milky
Way's origin centers around the birth
of Hercules - the illegitimate son of
Zeus and the mortal princess Alcmene.
To provide his son with immortality,
Zeus held the child to the breast of his
sleeping wife, Hera (goddess of childbirth),
and let him suckle. So vigorously
did Hercules feed that Hera awoke and
pulled the child away, scattering the
food of immortality across the vault of
the heavens to become the Milky Way.
Now let's look at a less-told tale. Cronus
(King of the Titans) learned from a
prophecy that a son of his would usurp
his power, and so he swallowed every
child born to him. When his wife Rhea
discovered she was pregnant again,
she secreted herself away to a cave on
Mount Dicte in Crete and gave birth
to her son Zeus. Rhea left her infant in
the care of the she-goat Amalthea, who
apportioned her divine milk between
Zeus and her own newborn kids. Rhea
then returned home to trick Cronus.
After wrapping a stone in swaddling
clothes, she presented it to Cronus to
swallow. Before he did so, Cronus put
what he thought was his child to Rhea's
breast, whose milk splashed off the
stone to form the Milky Way.
When Amalthea and her kids died,
Zeus awarded them a place in the starry
heavens. He had Amalthea's goat hide
made into a shield whose supernatural
powers helped him and the Olympians
defeat his father in the War of the
Titans. As seen in this light, the yawning
cavity of Auriga's Pentagon becomes the
open mouth of Zeus's cave, at the back
of which we see Amalthea (as Capella;
the name is derived from the Sumerian
ÁŠ-KAR, " the goat star " ) nursing her
two kids and the infant Zeus - the
three stars of The Kids asterism.
We can also imagine the Pentagon
simply as the stone that Rhea had presented
to Cronus, off which we see her
breast milk splashing toward the northwest
and southeast as the Milky Way.
Or we could choose to see the Pentagon
as Martha Evans Martin imagined it in
her 1907 book The Friendly Stars, as a
" five-sided figure somewhat in the shape
of a shield " - the aegis of Zeus.
By the way, transformation is a key
element in Greek mythology, and Zeus
was often party to it. Now you can play
along as you look up at Auriga's Pentagon
and enter the cave of Zeus.
¢ Contributing Editor STEPHEN JAMES
O'MEARA has been studying the stars
and their lore for more than 50 years.
sk yand tele scope .o r g * FEBRUARY 2024 45
IVY CLOSE IMAGES / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
http://skyandtelescope.org
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