Sky & Telescope - April 2025 - 45

Stories in the Stars by Stephen James O'Meara
Alphard
and the
Golden
Branch
Slip into the night sky's
" infernal region " with Hydra,
the Water Snake.
I
t's spring in the Northern Hemisphere,
time for life to push up from
the ground after a long winter's sleep.
A look at the center star chart on pages
42-43 will show Orion, the Hunter,
long a symbol of winter, near setting in
the west; Virgo, the Virgin (an ancient
fertility goddess), rising in the east;
and the Big Dipper upside down in the
north, pouring its life-giving waters
onto the thirsty earth. Much of the
southern sky, however, breaks this celebratory
air, as it offers us prime viewing
of a mythological realm of the dead.
This region of cosmic gloom has
only one stellar beacon: 2nd-magnitude
Alphard, the Alpha (α) star of Hydra,
the Water Snake (usually female in
ancient times). A line from Gamma (γ)
Leonis through Regulus, both in the
Sickle of Leo, the Lion, points directly
to Alphard. Danish astronomer Tycho
Brahe (1546-1601) called it Cor Hydrae,
meaning Hydra's Heart. The name
refers to the star's location in the creature's
body; but we can also watch the
golden-hued star pulse with the vagaries
of our churning atmosphere.
This month, as seen from midnorthern
latitudes around nightfall,
Alphard lies at its highest, burning in a
well of darkness - a vast visual realm of
largely inconspicuous stars. The well is
capped by three prominent Alpha stars:
0.4-magnitude Procyon in Canis Minor
to the west, 1st-magnitude Regulus
in Leo to the northeast, and 1st-magnitude
Spica in Virgo to the east. The
placement of these stars all but covers
the length of the Water Snake, which
resides in the dark well.
We can visualize the triad of bright
stars as the points where Poseidon,
Greek god of the sea, struck his trident
in the rocks of Lerna to create a spring
in honor of Amymone, a water nymph
he loved after saving her from a satyr.
The spring ended a drought in southern
Greece but became the lair of the multiheaded
Hydra, whom Hercules was sent
to overcome in his 12 labors.
Let's now imagine our celestial well
of darkness as the Lernaean spring
where Hydra resides. It would fit right
in with the legend of Hydra, as popularly
linked to the labors of Hercules.
But the spring of Amymone was also
envisioned as the gateway to the underworld,
where Hades, its king, ruled over
the souls of the dead.
In Book 6 of Virgil's Aeneid, the
Trojan hero Aeneas consults the sibyl
- the oracle of Apollo at Cumae, a
Greek colony near Naples, Italy - and
begs the prophetess to guide him into
the underworld so he can meet his
dead father's ghost. " At this moment, "
Thomas Bullfinch recaps in the Golden
Age of Myth & Legend, " with horrid
clang, the brazen gates unfolded, and
Aeneas saw within a Hydra with fifty
heads guarding the entrance. "
pIn this etching depicting a scene from Virgil's
Aeneid, the Cumaean sibyl holds the golden
bough that will allow her and Aeneas to pass
unharmed into the underworld. The entrance is
guarded by the multi-headed Hydra; Cerberus,
the three-headed hound; and other horrors.
Usually, the Hydra would attack any
unwary traveler with poisonous venom,
but the sibyl told Aeneas that, here, the
Hydra was only a ghost and could not
harm him. In order to pass safely into
the underworld, however, Aeneas had
to first break off a golden bough from
a tree in a neighboring grove and bring
it as an offering for Proserpine, queen
of the underworld. After handing the
bough to Charon, the underworld's
ferryman, the sibyl, and Aeneas were
allowed to cross the Styx, one of the rivers
of the underworld.
We can now look upon golden
Alphard as the golden bough, and the
sinuous form of Hydra as the River Styx.
On the center star chart, note too how
Hydra lies close to the gateway to the
celestial underworld: the point on the
chart where the celestial equator the
ecliptic intersect. This is where the Sun
" dies " each year as it slips from north to
south in its annual journey and the long
periods of darkness begin for those of us
living in the Northern Hemisphere.
¢ 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 * APRIL 2025 45
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS / CC BY 4.0
http://skyandtelescope.org
Sky & Telescope - April 2025

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