Perseus (constellation)
Perseus is a constellation in the northern sky, being named after the Greek mythological hero Perseus. In Greek mythology, Perseus was the son of Danaë, who was sent by King Polydectes to bring the head of Medusa the Gorgon. The constellation gives its name to the Perseus cluster, a massive galaxy cluster located 250 million light-years from Earth.
About Perseus (constellation) in brief
Perseus is a constellation in the northern sky, being named after the Greek mythological hero Perseus. In Greek mythology, Perseus was the son of Danaë, who was sent by King Polydectes to bring the head of Medusa the Gorgon. The galactic plane of the Milky Way passes through Perseus, whose brightest star is the yellow-white supergiant Alpha Persei, which shines at magnitude 1. 79. The constellation gives its name to the Perseus cluster, a massive galaxy cluster located 250 million light-years from Earth. It hosts the radiant of the annual Perseids meteor shower, one of the most prominent meteor showers in the sky. Four Chinese constellations are contained in the area of the sky identified with Perseus in the West. In Polynesia, the only people that called it a separate constellation were those of the Faa-iti Islands, who called it Faa Matohi, meaning “Little Valley of Faa” or “The Little Valley of the Māori” It is also bordered by Aries and Taurus to the south, Auriga to the east, Camelopardalis to the north, and Triangulum to the west. In Neo-Assyrian Babylonia, the constellation was known as the Old Man constellation, then associated with East in the MUL. APIN, an astronomical text from the 7th century. In Chinese astronomy, Persei represented Chi Persei, which represented the pile of corpses prior to their interment by the Double Cluster, and had special significance in Chinese astronomy. It was formed by Kappa, Omega, Rho, 24, 17 and 15 Persei.
It also represented Mu, Delta, Psi, Alpha, Gamma and Eta Persei in the third house of the White Tiger of the West, representing the boats that Chinese people were reminded to build in case of a catastrophic flood season. It does not indicate the mythological Perseus would disappear as the bordered star Aldebaran would indicate the outcome of the tides, but the evidence for this is disputed by the Tangaroa people, who occasionally came into conflict with Tangaroi Matoh i. It is one of 48 ancient constellation listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, and among the 88 modern constellatives defined by the International Astronomical Union. The best-known star, however, is Algol, linked with ominous legends because of its variability, which is noticeable to the naked eye. Other notable star systems in Perseus include X Persei,. a binary system containing a neutron star, and GK Perse i, a nova that peaked at magnitude 0. 2 in 1901. It and many of the surrounding stars are members of an open clusterknown as the Alpha Perse i Cluster. The Double Cluster was known to the ancient Chinese. It represented the potential of unusually high floods during the end of August and beginning of September at the beginning of the flood season, and possibly Mu Persei lay within it. The pile of corpse prior to the interment was Jānchuán, the sixth paranatellon of the house.
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This page is based on the article Perseus (constellation) published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 22, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
