[Contents], [Among the stars]

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November: Perseus

the hero

Perseus is one of the busiest characters of mythology, and is perhaps best-known for killing the snake-haired Gorgon Medusa. It was said that the Medusa would turn to stone anyone who looked directly at her, so Perseus used a brightly polished shield as a mirror. When he lopped off the Medusa's head, blood spurted out, and the winged horses Pegasus sprang forth from a drop.

The constellation is next to Cassiopeia and looks like a big inverted V. Below it is the Pleiades cluster in Taurus. It is the apparent direction from which the Perseid Meteor shower streams on Aug. 11-12 each year.

Perseus has several interesting objects for binoculars and the naked eye.

• Beta Persei, known as Algol, is probably the most ancient of the known variable stars. Every 2d 20h 48 m it drops in brightness from 2.1 to 3.4 mag., which is a factor 0.3 in brightness. This drop produced by eclipses as a faint star rotates about a bright star and blocks its light from our view.
• A few degrees to the N-E of Algol lies a bright cluster, M34, which can be seen in binoculars.
• In the northern portion of Perseus is the remarkable "Double Cluster" a twin pair of star clusters at nearly equal distances from the Sun.