There, too, sits Queen Cassiopeia in her dazzling chair,
while the Great King, Cepheus, towers gigantic over the pole.
Professor Young has significantly remarked that a great number of the
constellations are connected in some way or other with the Argonautic
Expedition -- that strangely fascinating legend of earliest Greek
story which has never lost its charm for mankind. In view of all this,
we may well congratulate ourselves that the constellations will
outlast our time and the time of countless generations to follow us;
and yet they are very far from being eternal. Let us now study some of
the effects of the stellar motions upon them.
We begin with the familiar figure of the ``Great Dipper.'' He who has
not drunk inspiration from its celestial bowl is not yet admitted to
the circle of Olympus. This figure is made up of seven conspicuous
stars in the constellation Ursa Major, the ``Greater Bear.'' The
handle of the ``Dipper'' corresponds to the tail of the imaginary
``Bear,'' and the bowl lies upon his flank. In fact, the figure of a
dipper is so evident and that of a bear so unevident, that to most
persons the ``Great Dipper'' is the only part of the constellation
that is recognizable. Of the seven stars mentioned, six are of nearly
equal brightness, ranking as of the second magnitude, while the
seventh is of only the third magnitude.
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