Sky & Telescope - June 2024 - 45

Stories in the Stars by Stephen James O'Meara
The Tragic Tale of Thisbe's Veil
G
A mist of delicate starlight lends an air of mystique to the June night sky.
Indeed, few constellations have as
o out on any clear, moonless night
in June and look high overhead
for Coma Berenices, the constellation
of Berenice's Hair. Don't be fooled by
the paucity of Coma stars plotted on
our Northern Hemisphere star chart on
pages 42-43. In addition to the three
dots shown, under dark, rural skies
your eyes will be greeted by a 5°-wide
maze of glittering starlight. The collection's
most conspicuous stars form
a pattern resembling the Greek letter
lambda, λ. With averted vision, numerous
fainter suns flow down from it like
long tresses.
The constellation glitters like dew
on a moonlit cobweb blown by a breeze.
In his 1888 book Astronomy with an
Opera-glass, Garrett P. Serviss wrote of
the starlit haze that " One might think
the old woman of the nursery rhyme
who went to sweep the cobwebs out of
the sky had skipped this corner . . . "
many guises as Coma Berenices. Its
stars were recognized by the earliest
skygazers, including those of ancient
Mesopotamia, who recorded " the dusky
stars which stand in the tail of the
Lion. " German cartographer Caspar
Vopel then humanized the group by
including the stars on his 1536 celestial
globe as Coma Berenices.
The constellation honors Queen
Berenice II of Egypt, whose amber
tresses, say the classical poets, flowed in
an erotic state of disarray to the wonder
of all. When the Queen honored a vow
to cut off her hair and sacrifice it to the
temple of Venus upon her husband's safe
return from war, it miraculously reappeared
as a constellation in the heavens.
But these stars have not always
belonged to Queen Berenice. An old
Babylonian love story, related by
another Roman poet, Ovid, offers a
different, tragic take. The tale centers
around two star-crossed lovers, Pyramus
and Thisbe, who decide to meet in
secret one evening in a forest. First to
arrive, Thisbe hears the roar of a lioness
and flees. In her haste, she drops
her veil. The lioness, whose jaws are
dripping with the blood of a recent kill,
attacks the veil, ripping it to shreds,
before disappearing into the woods.
When Pyramus arrives, he finds only
Thisbe's bloody veil and the mauled
carcass. Fearing the worst, he draws his
knife and stabs himself. When Thisbe
returns to the scene and sees Pyramus
mortally wounded, she takes her own
life. To honor the pair for their devotion,
Jupiter puts Thisbe's veil among
the stars, where, as Julius D. W. Staal so
eloquently writes in his 1988 book, The
New Patterns in the Sky, it still " flutters
today in the stars of Coma Berenices,
wafted by an eternal cosmic breeze. "
British astronomer Philibert J.
Melotte identified the stars streaming
south from Gamma (γ) Comae
Berenices as a star cluster, listing it as
the 111th object in his 1915 catalog of
star clusters. Now popularly known as
Melotte 111, the Coma Berenices star
cluster is extraordinarily close, at a
distance of 280 light-years. In fact, next
to the Hyades star cluster in Taurus, the
Bull, the Coma star cluster is the nearest
major star cluster to our Sun.
On the next clear evening, try to
piece together the legend of Pyramus
and Thisbe using several of the season's
main constellations. You can see Coma
Berenices as Thisbe's blood-stained
veil; Leo as the lion that stained it and
frightened Thisbe away; Virgo as the
fallen Thisbe; and Boötes performing
the role of the aggrieved Pyramus.
pWRITTEN IN THE STARS This 1606 etching by Italian artist Antonio Tempesta shows Thisbe
taking her own life. Note the lioness in the background and Thisbe's veil in the foreground.
¢ 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 * JUNE 2024 45
THE ELISHA WHITTELSEY COLLECTION / THE ELISHA WHITTELSEY FUND, 1951 / THE MET / PUBLIC DOMAIN

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