Two Hearts

Two hearts, and the man who stopped them both, are in the sky tonight. The hearts are Regulus, the heart of Leo the lion, and Alphard, the heart of Hydra, the water snake. The man was Hercules.

Here's the story: in a fit of madness, Hercules murdered his entire family. After the madness had passed, to atone for his crime, he was commanded to perform twelve almost impossible tasks -- the twelve labors of Hercules. The first was to slay an invulnerable lion: Leo. The second was to kill the immortal serpent Hydra. Well, the lion wasn't quite invulnerable: a few whacks from the club of Hercules and he was history. And the serpent: having nine heads that grew back as soon as they were cut off made him a formidable opponent, but as Hercules cut off each head, he burned the neck so new heads could not grow back. So much for the "immortal" serpent.

And here they are in the sky: the inner stars of the bowl of the Big Dipper point to the star Regulus, Cor Leonis, the heart of the Lion. Continuing in the same direction we come to Alphard, Cor Hydrae, the heart of the serpent. They are both bright stars; Regulus is the brighter of the two. And Hercules? He's just to the left (east) of Arcturus.

Both appear equally bright: about as bright as the stars of the Big Dipper. We moderns know that Regulus blazes blue-white because it is very hot: more than twice as hot as the sun. The orange color of Alphard tells us that it is cooler than the sun, more than a thousand degrees cooler. Both are more than a hundred trillion miles away: a billion times further away than the sun. Yet they blaze so brightly in the nighttime sky: they are truly immensely bright stars.

(03/26/08)