Forty-Eight

Forty-Eight

Ptolemy, he knew the skies –
At least, that much he saw of them
Of course, he only had his eyes,
And only words for drawing them.

He plotted out the vibrant stars
Upon each underlying figure,
But where ran the linking-bars
Were sketched with far less rigour.

And then there were the hinterlands,
The unincorporated flames
Between the cities – roguish bands
Too faint to ever warrant names.

He never saw the very South,
The depths beneath the Argo’s keel,
The Eridanus to its mouth,
The wings and scales which pole-wards wheel.

So later gazers filled the gaps
With modern and precision tools –
They’re lacking in some myths, perhaps,
A free-for-all where logic rules.

But Ptolemy has the last laugh,
Those empty spaces serve their turn –
For ev’ry dim and dull giraffe,
Shall help his bears to brightly burn,

And sailors through the years are wise,
From triremes to ships-of-the-line,
To just ignore the cluttered skies
And let Polaris shine.

Infact, Ptolemy named hardly any of the stars in his Almagest, with only the following:

Bootes: Arktouros (Arcturus): curiously, this is described as being ‘under the constellation’ and ‘between the thighs’ – so not technically part of Bootes at all.
Lyra: Lyra (now called Vega)
Heniochos (Auriga): Aix (now Capella) & Haedi (now called Haedus I & II, except Haedus I is now called Sadatoni).
Aetos (Aquila): Aetos (now called Altair, which like Vega is a later Arabic name). Also of note is a passing namecheck to some stars being known as ‘Antonous’, a sort of mini constellette.  This is in reference to a real individual and favourite of Emperor Hadrian who had drowned a few years previously – but his epitaph didn’t catch on, and his half-dozen stars are now firmly within Aquila.
Tauros (Taurus): Hyádes (The Hyades) & Pleias (The Pleiades) clusters, but not their individual stars.
Karkinos (Cancer): Onoi (Aselii, now Aselius Borealis & Australis).
Leon (Leo): Basiliskos (Regulus), and also mentions an asterism called Plokamos (Coma Berenices) but doesn’t consider it a separate constellation (unlike today).  So should I have named this poem Fifty ?
Parthenos (Virgo): Protrygeter (now Vindemiatrix) & Stachys (Spica)
Skorpios (Scorpius): Antares – the anti-Ares, or rival of Mars.
Kyon (Canis Major): Kyon (Sirius) – Ptolemy names both the constellation and its brightest star ‘The Dog’, even though the name Sirius (or rather, Seirios) is both Greek and older.  He also thought it looked reddish, which makes no sense (and it couldn’t be the final red giant phase of Sirius B, as there would still be evidence of lingering nebulosity).
Prokyon (Canis Minor): Prokyon (Procyon, as in pre-Kyon) which name he also gives the constellationas a whole – all two stars of it – I’ve always thought it looks more like Canis Major’s juicy bone).
Argo: Kanobos (Canopus)

Interesting that all bar two are still non-Arabic, though only Antares survives unscathed, with a few others receiving a light Latin makeover.  Surprisingly, no mention is made of the two brightest stars in Gemini being named as Castor & Pollux.  These are also the names of the Twins themselves, so presumably their transfer onto the stars is later.  But even more surprising is that the Greeks apparently didn’t think it worth naming Betelgeuse, Rigel or Alpha Centauri.

There are a small handful of other Latin-based stellar names, and even a few Greek ones (mostly the names of individual Pleiadians), but these were coined later. For instance –

Bellatrix (Orion): from ‘female warrior’, it was first applied to Capella before being transferred in the 1400s and cemented by Johannes Bayer in 1603 – very much a name in search of a star…
Polaris (Canis Minor): a shortening of Stellar Polaris, though I don’t know when the shortening first happened. The long version was recorded by Gemma Frisius in 1547, and it should be noted that precession has only moved this star close to the celestial pole in recent centuries – indeed it won’t be at its closest until around 2100 (or should I say HE ₁₂100 ?) – though it was probably the closest naked-eye star when Old English named it ‘scip-steorra’.
Mira (Cetus): best known for being an exemplar for a type of variable star, Mira (from the Latin for ‘wonderful’) was names by Johannes Hevelius in 1662.

And finally, special mention must be made to the one lone Anglo-Saxon star name: Peacock in Pavo. (although ‘pea’ ultimately has a Latin root, though was very much in use in Old English, as was ‘cock’, although the bird that would unite the two was unknown to them). Named by the RAF in the 1930s after its constellation, in much the same way as Ptolemy shows happening with Lyra and Kyon.

And speaking of Blighty, what did the mediaeval English farmhand think when looking up at the wide, unpolluted night sky ? It is hard to be sure what they called any of it before the Renaissance, though they likely knew the major constellations (The Plough, Orion, those of the Zodiac). It seems strange that they didn’t have names for at least the twenty-odd brightest stars, but who knows – perhaps the very concept of naming stars individually was invented by the Arabs ? And perhaps the very few exceptions that Ptolemy does mention are because these ones were used in astrology ? (I’m not sure they were more than others – I’m just speculating…)