Leo, constellation of

As spring approaches, Leo, the Lion, can be seen high in the south-eastern skies. It is the fifth sign and the sixth constellation of the zodiac, with the Sun travelling through it from 7 August to 14 September. It is sometimes thought to be the lion from Nemea that Hercules slew as one of his twelve labours.

Leo is one of the few constellations which bears a fair resemblance to the shape it is supposed to represent. The lion's head is outlined by a group of six stars called the Sickle, with the last star the brightest in the group, being Regulus, or the Little King. Four quite bright stars mark his body and his tail is given by Denebula which, literally means the lion's tail.

Regulus, the twenty-first brightest star in the skies, is a briiliant blue white star. Its colour indicates that it is very hot, probably with a surface temperature of 11,000°C compared with the Sun's surface temperature of around 6,000°C. Lying some ninety light years from the Earth, Regulus is five times as large as the Sun and pours out over two hundred times as much light.

Within the Sickle group of Leo, the second brightest star, Algieba, or the mane of the Lion, appears as a fairly ordinary star, but when looked at through even a moderate-sized telescope it splits into two beautiful golden stars. These are a pair of orange giants which travel slowly around each other, taking some six hundred years to complete a full turn.

Just east of Leo is a shimmering little group of stars known as Berenice's Hair or Coma Berenices. Berenice was a Queen of Egypt and wife of Ptolemy Euergetes. Once, when he was in battle, she promised the gods that if he returned home safely, she would cut off all her long hair and offer it to Venus as a sacrifice. The King duly returned and Berenice was true to her promise. However, her tresses later disappeared from the altar in the Temple of Venus. A court astronomer, hoping to avoid any trouble, pointed to a little patch glistening in the skies close to Leo and said th~at the gods were so pleased with the offering that they had taken the hair and placed it in the heavens for all eternity.

From the Appletree Press title: A Little Book of Stars.