Animals in the sky!

(Yes…the same topic as in the past 4 or so blogs- awesome right?!)

Moving swiftly on to…

9) Scorpio: Where we last left our heroes, Orion had just been beset by a scorpion sent by Apollo in order to kill him and keep his sister Artimis’ chastity intact. Enter the deadly scorpion. To make a long story short, the scorpion succeeded, by Artimis decided to put the pair of them up in the sky for all time in order to commemorate their fierce battle (although, as far as I know…it wasn’t much of a battle so much as Orion stepped on a scorpion…and died). However, because the pair were so at odds, the constellations were placed on the complete opposite sides of the sky, so they never meet and their fury never comes to fruition.

And since I feel that although I love Greek myth with all of my heart, I should really explore some other topics, this will be the last one:

10) Gemini: I thought this would be perfectly scandalous constellation to finish with! As the myth would have it, Leda, mother of the infamous Helen of Troy, was all in all raped by a swan. I should just leave it there- that sentence in itself is priceless. But…moving on. The swan of course was Zeus in disguise, because he’s messed up like that. Leda then gave birth to two twin boys, Castor and Pollox (the two brightest stars in the constellation), of which one was born by Zeus and another by Leda’s husband, King Tyndarus of Sparta. Pollox, the son of Zeus was immortal and abnormally strong. Castor was especially gifted with horses. The pair of them helped to save their sister Helen when she was kidnapped by Paris in the battle of Troy. The story goes that when Castor died, Pollox begged his father to give his beloved brother the same gift of immortality that he himself was privy to. Zeus granted his wish and therefore the pair of them are immortalized by the constellations in the sky.

I just thought I'd include this-  found it online and thought it was gorgeous...not to mention it accurately has elements of the myth integrated into the art. Love it!

Well, that’s all I suppose. Of course there’s lots and lots of other constellations to explore, and I definitely encourage you to look them up yourself, but I feel as if I should discover some other awesome classically related astro stuff. Hope the myths were good while they lasted!

-StarKid