The sky at night (2)

13 March 2014

In his guide Patrick Moore fulminates against all sorts of modernisms such as splitting up and/or re-arranging perfectly good star signs. Anyone that has tried to make sense of some of the names of star signs knows that it quite often takes an overheated imagination to see what the old Greeks saw when they dished them out. Seeing what the Greeks saw is not made easier by taking stars that obviously belong in one group and assigning them to another neighbouring star sign. In the north many stargazers will know the great square of Pegasus, of which we are still in anticipation here below the equator now 500 miles south of Ascension Island. What sense does it make to take one corner star of the square, Alpheratz, and assigning it to Andromeda? Feminism run amock.
We here on the good ship ‘Oosterschelde’ never knew that in the south there is an absolutely amazing star sign next to the Southern Cross that used to be called Argos. It is a complete ship and it stares you in the face if you catch it the right way up early in the morning in the southern sky.
What we see is one of the old sailing ships in all its splendour. It has a raised poop deck and a solid, long keel with the added benefit that the star on the right below is Canopus, the second brightest in the sky. It has two masts with sails and the detail is eerie, the forward mast is tilted forward as they used to be. To call it Argos is of course an anachronism as the ship obviously belongs to the sixteenth century, but the sentiment can be easily explained in a Freudian sense. Argos was the ship Jason used when he took his Argonauts raping and pillaging in the East. In my mind this star sign is on par with Orion and Scorpius, but sadly it has been cut up into Puppis (Back Deck), Carina (Keel) and Vela (Sails) and in such an illogical way that if you look at these three separately it makes no sense.
The main mast of the Argos with its sail is often called the false Southern Cross, as it can easily be confused with the real thing close by.