Queen of the Night

As evening progresses, the Big Dipper drops lower and lower in the northern sky. Always in the sky, by 11:00 it will just touch the northern horizon. The familiar "W" of Cassiopeia, the queen of the night, moves higher and higher. About as bright as the Big Dipper itself, the two are like the opposite ends of a dumbell, forever twirling around the North Star.

To the Greeks she was the queen of Ethiopia, so boastful of her own beauty that she enraged Poseidon, king of the sea. To propitiate him, she was forced to offer the sacrifice of her daughter Andromeda (who was later saved, but that's another story.) The "W" represents the throne of Cassiopeia. But to more ancient peoples, at the dawn of civilization, sitting in this throne was the Earth Mother herself, the source of all life.

In 1572 a great star shone from this constellation. Brighter than the planet Venus, for two weeks it outshone all the other stars in the nighttime sky. It could even be seen in daylight. A star had exploded. For over a year, fragments would continue to glow brightly.

Known as "Tycho's star," in honor of Tycho Brahe, modern astronomers estimate the distance of this star to be ten thousand light years. To appear as bright as it did, it must have been hundreds of millions of times brighter than the sun. In the core of this exploding supernova, at a temperature of billions of degrees, the heavy elements -- nickel, copper, zinc -- were forged. Without these elements our bodies, even our planet, could not have been formed.

We live because stars have died. We are the stuff of the stars.

(10/03/07)