The connection there being Algol?
“Medusa is fictional”
Gee… Really??
More than Algol – the first “officially” discovered variable star is Mira, which is omicron Ceti, the ballooning variable red star at the heart of cetus. The name is usually translated “the whale”, but it’s really “the sea monster”. In fact, Cetus is the Sea Monster that Perseus kills to rescue Andromeda. In both versions of Clash of the Tians, this creature’s name was changed to the Scandinavian Kraken, possibly because it sounded cooler. But Cetus is also the mother of both the Gorgons and the Graeae (called The Stygian Witches in both versions of CotT). And isn’t it odd that you’ve got a naked-eye variable star in both the head of the Gorgon (Algol) and the heart of Cetus, and the creatures are related?
But it gets better – the same person who measured the period of Algol – John Goodricke – also measured the variability of another naked-eye variable star – delta Cephei, after which the Cepheid variable stars are named. delta Cephei is, as the name would suggest, in the constellatin of Cepheus. Cepheus is the father of Andromeda, whom Perseus rescued.
well, after that, I had to wonder if there were any other naked0eye variable stars in constellations associated with the myth. There was – the middle star in the “W” of Cassiopeia is a naked-eye variable star. This was suspected in the 1830s but only confirmed a century later. It’s different type of variable star, with no well-defined period, but it is a naked-eye variable.
There are a couple of weakly variable stars in Pegasus, and none in Andromeda, or , aside from Algol, n Perseus.
Naked eye variable stars – those which are bright, with considerable variation in their brightness, and with relatively short periods (so that variability can be noticed) aren’t that common in the Northern Hemisphere. It seems to me pushing the bounds of coincidence that four of the most spectacular (including two of the most striking – the three-day extremely bright Algol and the 11 month red beating heart that is Mira) should not only be in constellations associated by being in the same myth, but should also be in constellations representing the opponents of Perseus.*
There’s more to it than this – I devote two chapters to the astronomy of the myth, and it’s not just a plug for the book that makes me direct you there. as far as I know, I’m the first one to notice the concatenation of variable stars in the myth and point it out. This is therefore an indirect bit of evidence that the ancients knew about the variability of algol and Mira.
*Cetus and Medusa are obvious. One thing suppressed in most modern retellings of the myth is that, after Perseus rescued Andromeda her former suitor Phineus (who shares many features of Kalibos, at least from the first version of CotT) turned Cepheus and Casiopeia against Perseus, and Perseus had to fight his way out with Andromeda, ultimately using the Gorgon’s head as a weapon.)
I’m glad you responded. I couldn’t figure out what that old programming language had to do with it.
Every now and then I wonder if maybe old C.P. Snow had it wrong…