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Cancer (Constellation): Difference between revisions
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Cancer is best known among stargazers as the home of Praesepe ([[Messier 44]]), an open cluster also called the Beehive Cluster, located right in the centre of the constellation. Located 577 light-years from Earth, it is one of the nearest open clusters to our Solar System. M 44 contains about 50 stars, the brightest of which are of the sixth magnitude. The smaller, denser open cluster [[Messier 67]] can also be found in Cancer, 2500 light-years from Earth. It has an area of approximately 0.5 square degrees, the size of the full Moon. It contains approximately 200 stars, the brightest of which are of the tenth magnitude.<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_%28constellation%29 Cancer]</ref> | Cancer is best known among stargazers as the home of Praesepe ([[Messier 44]]), an open cluster also called the Beehive Cluster, located right in the centre of the constellation. Located 577 light-years from Earth, it is one of the nearest open clusters to our Solar System. M 44 contains about 50 stars, the brightest of which are of the sixth magnitude. The smaller, denser open cluster [[Messier 67]] can also be found in Cancer, 2500 light-years from Earth. It has an area of approximately 0.5 square degrees, the size of the full Moon. It contains approximately 200 stars, the brightest of which are of the tenth magnitude.<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_%28constellation%29 Cancer]</ref> | ||
The modern symbol for Cancer represents the pincers of a crab, but Cancer has been represented as various types of creatures, usually those living in the water, and always those with an exoskeleton. | |||
In the Egyptian records of about 2000 BC it was described as Scarabaeus (Scarab), the sacred emblem of immortality. In Babylonia the constellation was known as MUL.AL.LUL, a name which can refer to both a crab and a snapping turtle. On boundary stones, the image of a turtle or tortoise appears quite regularly and it is believed that this represents Cancer as a conventional crab has not so far been discovered on any of these monuments. There also appears to be a strong connection between the Babylonian constellation and ideas of death and a passage to the underworld, which may be the origin of these ideas in later Greek myths associated with Hercules and the Hydra. In the 12th century, an illustrated astronomical manuscript shows it as a water beetle. Albumasar writes of this sign in Flowers of Abu Ma'shar. A 1488 Latin translation depicts cancer as a large crayfish,[10] which also is the constellation's name in most Germanic languages. Jakob Bartsch and Stanislaus Lubienitzki, in the 17th century, described it as a lobster. | |||
==History and Mythology== | ==History and Mythology== | ||