Canis+Minor+-+Christopher+Marquez

Christopher Marquez 4/26/2015 Astro 10 Term Paper Cosmic Pup Who doesn't love puppies? What's more, a visible colossal cosmic puppy, made of ancient stars. The constellation 'Little Dog', from the Latin 'Canis Minor' is one of the modern eighty eight constellations and is listed as one of Ptolemy's forty eight constellations. Though untouchable and unliving, it's still astonishing, to say the least, to the individual with an outlandishly unhealthy visual imagination or to those who understand what they are truly looking at. The description of the constellation will be given along with a mildly detailed account of the origins of its name, then the stars within the constellation will be covered briefly, and the significance of this constellation to a South American Tribe (Desana) and the Egyptians will be covered. Also, Little Dog's placement in the sky can be particularly interesting if the other constellations are also taken into account, as in one piece of art detailing the sky it can be seen howling whilst atop a galloping unicorn. With the naked eye today, Canis Minor can in most cases only be seen as two dots in the sky, which makes just a simple line segment when the dots are connected. However, to the extremely aided imagination, one can see how the ancients attributed a dog to a line segment in the sky, it couldn't possibly be anything else. It looks exactly like a baby dog, if dogs looked like line segments. The two stars making up the constellation are Procyon and Gomeisa (respectively, Alpha Canis Minoris and Beta Canis Minoris to the laypeople). Procyon is actually two celestial objects put together, called Procyon A and Procyon B. Procyon A is a spectral type F5 with an absolute magnitude of 2.6 (Kaler), and is therefore a main sequence star on the HR-Diagram. Procyon B is a white dwarf (Kaler), and since it is considered to be the same age as Procyon A, must have been larger than Procyon A to have burned off more fuel and ‘died’ faster (Sessions). Procyon A and B are a ‘binary star’ system, and based on description alone, may be the beginning phases of a nova. Gomeisa is a main sequence star of spectral class B8 with an absolute magnitude of 2.6 (Kaler). "It's [Procyon] the 8th brightest star in the sky, and the 6th brightest of stars that are easily visible from the most populated regions of the Northern Hemisphere" (Sessions). So the brightest star in Canis Minor is not merely one star, but two objects that are indistinguishable to the human eye. The name Procyon is Greek, meaning “before the dog”. It was named that, because Procyon would come up in the sky before the ‘normal’ dog star Sirius (Located within the constellation Canis Major, and which is also the brightest star in the firmament). Canis Minor and Canis Major are commonly represented as following one constellation known as Orion the Hunter, both of them his hunting dogs (Allen, 132). From latitudes around the mid-north (Such as in the USA), Procyon still rises before Sirius. However, from more southern latitudes Sirius actually rises prior to Procyon, nullifying the meaning of the Greek word "Procyon" mentioned earlier, defined as 'before the dog'. This shift in rising time is actually the Earth's fault, as precession is to blame (Sessions). Within the dog and hunter constellations, each has a distinct star which is associated with something known as 'The Winter Triangle'. The Winter Triangle is an asterism which is used to help people quick-spot objects, in this case, the asterism helps the observer find three constellations with respect to each-other, Canis Minor, Canis Major, and Orion. The stars Procyon, Sirius, and Betelgeuse form the triangle. They are, respectively, the brightest stars within the dog constellations and a red giant which forms Orion's shoulder. The rising of Procyon was extremely important to the Egyptians. Sirius, the bright star in Canis Major would give warning to the annual flooding of the Nile River. Sirius would rise before the sun, and Procyon would rise just before Sirius, thus giving the egyptians even more advanced warning. So the rising of Procyon just before Sirius gave a warning to the oncoming warning, so to speak (Sessions). So to the Egyptians the anticipation of the flooding of the Nile was a matter of flourishing or of famine, of whether the coming waters were a gift or a curse, to the egyptians these stars were the difference between life and death. The stars in and around Canis Minor also play a major role in many American civilizations, one example being the Desana from South America who viewed Canis Minor as part of a hexagonal border outlining their version of the constellation Orion "The Desana people who live in the rain forests of the Amazon and Orinoco (today Colombia and Venezuela) build their longhouses according to a six sided plan... each vertex of the hexagon consists of a housepost that can be identified with one of the basic support stars. The bisector of the hexagon on earth is a ridge-pole identified with the Pleiades, which today rise in this area just after spring equinox, thus signaling the beginning of the main fruiting season. To commemorate the event piles of palm fruits are heaped at the center of the house, where Orion, symbol of the center, swells, no doubt because he lies in the middle of the astro-hexagon and because his belt perfectly straddles the equator. Once again he is a hunter... The Desana year is divided into two rainy and two dry seasons. They reckon the central point of their calendar by the place and time where the shaman's staff will cast no shadow when held upright. Like a horizontal lid, a celestial hexagonal template consisting of the bright stars Procyon, Pollux, Capella, Canopus, Achernar, and one of the stars of our constellation Eridanus overlies the earth at sunrise and sunset, just as the sun is positioned at the equinoxes. At this time, when heavenly symmetry is in force, a vertical shaft of sunlight is said to fall on a mirror-like lake below, thus fertilizing the earth. Furthermore, the original tribes were said to be six in number and they still organize themselves socially in a hexagonal model" (Aveni, 118). Had Canis minor not been there, there would not be a roughly symmetrical border, and their houses and sitting organization would not center around a hexagon. Their culture would be different, in a way we probably cannot imagine. Here is a photo of Canis Minor howling while ‘sitting’ atop a galloping unicorn, taken from Urania’s Mirror, from the Library of Congress.



 To put it simply, Canis Minor is made up of two visible stars or one binary star system and one star, means ‘little dog’, influenced cultures such as the Desana and was part of the difference between life and death to the Egyptians, and howls atop a unicorn.

\ Bibliography

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Allen, Richard Hinckley. Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning. New York: Dover Publications, 1963. Print.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Aveni, Anthony F. People and the Sky: Our Ancestors and the Cosmos. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2008. Print.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Bloxam, Richard Rouse. A Familiar Treatise on Astronomy .. London: Printed for Samuel Leigh, 1825. Print.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Kaler, James. "THE 170 BRIGHTEST STARS." Brightest Stars. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 May 2015.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Sessions, Larry. "Procyon Is the Little Dog Star | EarthSky.org." EarthSky. Earthsky Communications, 23 Feb. 2015. Web. 05 May 2015.