Visit theallusionist.org/ex-constellations to listen to this episode and get more information about the stars therein.
This is the Tranquillusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, say some words over serene music by Martin Austwick, all with the purpose of making you relaxed and giving your internal monologue a bit of a break. No emotional response required. Previous Tranquillusionists have included champion dogs, 282 salads, gay animals and Australia’s Big Things. Today we have a collection of ex-constellations - yes, even the patterns of stars get retired, or fired.
On with the Tranquillusionist.
When I look up at the night sky and pick out the handful of constellations I can identify, I am always beset by one particular thought: “Did this constellation look more like a thing back when there wasn’t so much light pollution?” I’m not seeing Cassiopeia in those five stars. At best I’m getting… a paper boat? Maybe the shrug emoticon.
Nowadays, there are officially 88 constellations, according to the International Astronomical Union, or IAU, which formalised the list in the 1920s. All the other constellations: filler. Garbage. Nonstellations, amirite?
The official 88 cover the whole sky, so all points fall into their boundaries, and the way the IAU defines the constellations is by those boundaries, not by the stars within, or the shapes those stars appear to form. And when the IAU says a celestial body is in a particular constellation, they don’t necessarily mean it is one of the stars forming the constellation, it’s not Orion’s belt buckle; they mean it appears within the boundaries of that constellation. The system is for navigation - although that’s not a new feature for the concept of constellations.
Shapes within the constellations are asterisms, like the Southern Cross; or the Big Dipper or Plough is an asterism within the constellation Ursa Major; or there’s Sagittarius’s teapot - yeah, Sagittarius has a teapot, with steam rising from the spout in the form of the Milky Way.
The current official constellation names are strongly influenced by Greco-Roman culture, but throughout history, people all over the world have of course traced their own stories onto the stars.
Before the IAU’s official list of constellations, essentially how constellation-naming worked for hundreds of years was an astronomer would try to get a name going for a constellation, put it on a star map, and sometimes their names stuck and other astronomers kept reproducing them on their maps of the stars - but sometimes there was already a more popular name in circulation so this one would dwindle, and sometimes the name would stick around for a while, then lose currency and the stars would be reassigned to a different constellation.
So let’s hear it for some of the constellations that we used to have but are now ex-constellations.
Let's hear it for Anguilla, the eel. Named by John Hill, who was an 18th century English apothecary and botanist. Pin his name in your brain.
Let's hear it for Antinous, named after the Roman Emperor Hadrian’s lover, who around 1900 years ago died in his late teens, in mysterious and possibly sacrificial circumstances. After which, the grief-stricken Hadrian named a flower after him, AND ordered a city in Egypt to be flattened, rebuilt and named after Antinous, AND Hadrian got him deified and started a cult for worshipping him, which was pretty popular for 250 years! Oh yeah, and Hadrian named a constellation after him, but that actually seems low-key after the city and the cult.
Let's hear it for Apes, the bees. Not to be confused with Apis, the BEE. Apes, the bees, was renamed Vespa, the wasp, to avoid confusion with Apis, the bee. But you know what really would have avoided confusion is if Petrus Plancius, the astronomer who named them - yes, BOTH of them - had had more range than “the bee” and “the bees”. Other insects are available!
So Apes the bees became Vespa, the wasp, which then became Musca Borealis, the fly, the northern fly, not to be confused with the Southern Fly, Musca Australis, which was just the newer name for that old rival Apis, the bee!
But Musca Australis, the southern fly, is the overall winner because it is still in the officials constellation club. Although now it’s just called Musca, the fly, because it doesn’t need to distinguish itself from the other Musca because that no longer exists, its stars are now part of Aries. Bye, bees! There’s only room in the sky for one bee. Even though it’s a bee in a fly costume.
Let's hear it for Aranea, the long-legged spider. That was another one named by John Hill, who had a real portfolio career. He started out as an apothecary, but when he got married young, he needed more money so he tried botany as a side hustle; and when that turned out not to be where the big money is, he tried to become an actor; and when that turned out not to be where the big money is, he wrote a very angry rant about the theatre owners and the other actors; and after that, his career in theatre was as dead as the constellation Aranea.
Supposedly he was such a bad actor that even though he was an actor and an apothecary, he couldn’t get cast in Romeo and Juliet in the role of the apothecary.
Let's hear it for Argo Navis, the Ship Argo. It was a huge constellation - our largest constellation now is Hydra, and the late Argo Navis was 28% bigger than that, but such a whopping constellation was considered unwieldy, impractically enormous, so in 1930 the IAU split this celestial supership into three official constellations: the sail, the keel and the poop deck. Isn’t it a bit weird to have just a poop deck without a ship to go with it?
There was also a nearby constellation called Malus, the mast, but that was later abolished too.
We remember Assellus Borealis and Assellus Australis: the northern ass and the southern ass. Two donkeys - what did you think I was talking about?
We remember Asterion and Chara, the two dogs. The dog names were thanks to a misprint; about 2100 years ago, the Greek astronomer Ptolemy described these constellations as clubs, and when his work was later translated into Arabic, ‘club’ was rendered as ‘staff with a hook’. And the Arabic word for ‘hook’ looks very similar to the Arabic word for ‘dogs’, so this later all got translated into Latin as ‘dogs with spears’? Sure, why not - some dogs will play fetch with anything stick-shaped.
Let's hear it for The Battery of Volta, named to commemorate the invention of the electric battery by Alessandro Volta. There was quite a lot of cutting edge technology in the ex-constellations, there was Globus Aerostaticus, the hot air balloon, named in 1798 for the new invention of the hot air balloon. And there was Machina Electrica, the electrical generator, and Officina Typographica, the printing office, named in honour of the Gutenberg printing press.
But what tech do we have in the constellations now - just the plough? Where’s the air fryer?
We remember Bufo, the toad. That’s another one by John Hill, who along with the apothecaring and acting also published novels and plays and an opera and wrote about geology and honey and insects and wood and moss AND wrote a 650-page dictionary of astronomy. However, none of those were his biggest claim to fame, which will become clear in the course of this Tranquillusionist.
Let's hear it for Cancer Minor, the lesser crab. Now incorporated into which constellation of the zodiac? Nope, not Cancer, it’s now part of Gemini. Obviously.
Let's hear it for Capra and Haedi, the goat star and the two baby goats. Capra was a mythical goat who suckled the baby Zeus.
Capra was supposedly so ugly that when she died and Zeus took her skin as a souvenir and wore it in combat, he defeated the Titans in battle because they were like, “Yuk! how am I supposed to fight looking at that? Ugh, it looks like a dead goat that’s been flayed! Gross! And even if it had been alive, that goat wouldn’t have been hot! Oh no we have died and now Zeus is in charge.”
That’s how Zeus got to be in charge. You do learn a lot from the skies.
Let's hear it for Cerberus, the three-headed dog.
Let's hear it for Custos Messium, the harvester of wheat.
Let's hear it for Dentalium, the pointy tooth shell. That’s another one of John Hill’s. John Hill wrote a 26-volume book about plants, but didn’t name any constellations after plants.
Let's hear it for Felis, the cat. The French astronomer Jérôme Lalande named that one. He said: “The starry sky has worried me quite enough in my life, so that now I can have my joke with it.” Jérôme Lalande was a cat guy, and he wanted there to be a cat in the sky. There were BIG cats in the sky, lions and a lynx; but he wanted there to be a CAT cat. And he got one. Just not forever. Alas, no pet is forever.
Let's hear it for Frederici Honores AKA Gloria Frederica, Frederick’s honours or Frederick’s glory. Johann Bode named that after King Frederick of Prussia, who’d died the previous year. What’s the point, Johann! He’s not gonna know!
There are so many royal sycophancy ex-constellations.
There’s Cor Caroli Regis Martyris, the heart of King Charles the martyr. King Charles’s other organs remain unaccounted for.
There’s Gladii Electorales Saxonici, the Crossed Swords of the Electorate of Saxony.
There’s Psalterium Georgii, King George III’s harp. Are we supposed to have constellations for all the monarchs’ possessions? Because monarchs tend to own a lot of stuff. Look at all these royal items that used to be in the sky:
There’s Taurus Poniatovii, the Bull of Stanislaus Poniatowski, King of Poland.
There’s Pomum Imperiale, the orb of the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I.
There’s Sceptrum Brandenburgicum, the scepter of the royal family of Brandenburg - the scepter is the stick royals hold to signify they’re better than you.
Another ex-constellation was Sceptrum et Manus Iustitiae, the scepter and hand of justice, in honour of King Louis XIV of France, the Sun King.
Here’s new rule: anyone who owns a scepter does not get a constellation as well.
Let's hear it for Gallus, the cockerel. It’s now part of the Poop Deck.
Let's hear it for Gryphites, the devil’s toenail mollusk, Hippocampus the seahorse, and Hirudo, the leech - all three named by John Hill. He’s having a great time, making the sky his aquarium!
Let's hear it for Jordanus, the River Jordan. Another river constellation that has been dumped was the Tigris. I agree with getting rid of these constellations, as stars were used for navigation, and these are real rivers on Earth so what if someone says, “Turn left at the river Tigris” and you guess whether it’s the Earth one or the sky one and get it wrong? Dangerously confusing! Like there shouldn’t be two places called Vancouver on the same train line. A friend visiting me has been caught out by that TWICE.
Let's hear it for Leo Palatinus, a palatine lion named to honour the German aristocrats who were patrons of the observatory. This constellation did not catch on more widely, though, because the thing about naming constellations to suck up to your patrons is that other astronomers don’t need to give a toenail mollusc about that.
Let's hear it for Limax, the slug. Named by - guess who? John Hill! He called slugs ‘naked snails’, which I guess is accurate, but ‘naked snail’ sounds a little pervy to me, like he’s enjoying it a bit too much.
Let's hear it for Linum Piscium, the fishing line. Oh come on. Any series of stars can look like a fishing line.
Let's hear it for Lochium Funis, the log line, used by seafarers for measuring ships’ speed. The log line was a log attached to a rope with a series of knots along it, and they’d throw the log off the ship and counted how fast the rope unspooled.
From this we get the term ‘knot’, for nautical speed, and we got terms like ‘log book’ and ‘log in’. Which is more of a legacy than this constellation, which nearly all astronomers refused to acknowledge. Any series of stars can look like a log line.
Let's hear it for Lumbricus, the earthworm. Named by John Hill! John Hill wrote satirical scientific papers about unicorn horns and pretending that water could turn into maggots. And he was probably naming these constellations as jokes too, which, why not?
Next up, another John Hill special: Manis, the pangolin. A cool choice, I say.
Let's hear it for Marmor Sculptile, the bust of Christopher Columbus. SHUT UP. NO. He’s already on way too much of the Earth, keep him out of the skies as well!
This constellation was on a star map designed in 1810 by William Crosswell, a cartographer from Boston, and he came up with two constellations that only appear on his own map: the Bust of Columbus, and Sciurus Volans, the flying squirrel. I think he should have been allowed to keep the flying squirrel.
Let's hear it for Mons Maenalus, named after a mountain in Greece that bristles with mythical beasts.
Let's hear it for Noctua, the owl.
Let's hear it for Patella, the limpet. By John Hill!
As well as being a prolific writer and namer of constellations, John Hill was a notorious troll, and had beeves with many of London’s high-profile writers. One of the most famous, Henry Fielding, used to refer to John Hill as “the little paltry dunghill”, to the point where something called the Paper War erupted, where writers would publish essays and poems critiquing Hill in the newspapers, and Hill would swipe back in the newspapers - presumably there was no actual news to print, because this war raged on for TWO YEARS, yes, these adult men stank up the newpapers for two years, until the decisive battle which was an epic poem called ‘The Hilliad’, satirising John Hill for 259 lines.
If I my podcast gets a one-star review that is even just a single sentence long, it ruins my whole day; a 259-line diss poem would probably kill me.
Let's hear it for Phaethon, the son of the Sun god Helios. Because Phaethon was so bad at driving his chariot that he nearly crashed into the Earth AND the sky, Zeus decided he had to stop him destroying everything and killed him with a lightning bolt. You know, Zeus had many bad points, but he was never indecisive.
Let's hear it for Phoenicopterus, the flamingo, now known as the crane. Similar.
Let's hear it for Pinna Marina, the mussel - yup, John Hill there, still loving putting little sea-blobs into the sky.
Let's hear it for Pluteum, the parapet - seems a tricky concept to express in stars. This was the less popular name for Equuleus Pictoris, the painter’s easel, or the painter’s small horse - horse in the same sense that occurs in a gymnastics horse; the painter didn’t have a Shetland pony, as far as I know.
Let's hear it for Polophylax, Guardian of the Pole. (Now the pole is unguarded! Go get it!)
Let's hear it for Quadrans Muralis, the mural quadrant-measuring instrument that astronomers used to measure the position of stars. Meta! There were some other practical ex-constellations, including Tarabellum, the drill. For when you have to put up a shelf in space.
Let's hear it for Ramus Pomifer, the apple branch, being held by Hercules, probably to commemorate the eleventh of his twelve labours, where he had to steal Zeus’s golden apples. We’ve seen how Zeus punishes bad drivers, I dread to think what he’d do if you steal his apples.
Let's hear it for Rangifer, the reindeer, named to commemorate the French mathematician Pierre Louis Maupertuis going on an expedition to northern Finland to measure what shape the Earth is, because at the time he was in a spat with astronomer Jacques Cassini over whether the world is oblate, like a satsuma, or prolate, like an egg but symmetrical. So Mapertuis went to northern Finland, measured the meridian, and declared the winner to be himself. And while he was at it, I guess he also saw a reindeer.
Let's hear it for Robur Carolinum, the oak tree that King Charles II hid in after his army was overthrown by republicans. The tree died after royal-loving tourists cut off too many branches as souvenirs. But, thanks to the tree, Charles stayed hidden and thus alive, and did not have too many of his heads cut off, ie more than zero of his heads.
Let's hear it for Sagitta Australis, the southern arrow.
Let's hear it for Scarabaeus, the rhinoceros beetle. Named by - say it with me: John Hill.
Let's hear it for Solarium, the sundial, apparently a very unpopular constellation. What did it DO? Not tell the time well?
Let's hear it for The Sudarium of Veronica, which was a piece of Saint Veronica’s veil with which she reportedly mopped blood and sweat from Jesus’s face, and since then, the veil has reportedly borne an imprint of Jesus’s face, AND it reportedly can restore lost sight, slake thirst, and resurrect the dead. It the swiss army knife of holy relics! But a lot of astronomers didn’t believe this constellation existed, which is appropriate for the item in the name, which is of more dubious provenance than the average holy relic, and may not even have had anything to with Veronica, patron saint of launderers and photographs; the Veronica part might have been a mishearing of ‘vera eikon’, the true image, that’s the explanation the Catholic Encyclopedia has gone with. You know what? I’m glad this constellation has been benched, way too much uncertainty.
Let's hear it for Tubus Herschelii Major and Tubus Herschelii Minor, meaning William Herschel’s big telescope - 20 ft long - and William Herschel’s small telescope, a mere 7ft long. These were named by the Hungarian astronomer Maximilian Hell, which, if I had that name, I’d be naming everything after myself. But he named them after the astronomer William Herschel to commemorate him discovering (inverted commas) the planet Uranus, pronouncing it is dangerous.
Maximilian Hell had never actually seen William Herschel’s telescopes, so he got the type of telescope wrong, he depicted the 7ft telescope as a refractor telescope when in reality it was a reflector telescope, durr, super embarrassing! so if you were looking at the skies and thinking, “That sure doesn’t look like a refractor telescope to me,” you’re correct!
There is a crater on the moon named Hell, after Maximilian Hell.
Let's hear it for Testudo, the tortoise, named by John Hill. As far as I know, of all the constellations John Hill named, NONE of them survived.
Let's hear it for Triangulum Majus and Triangulum Minus, the big triangle and the small triangle, ditched because those constellations were just triangles - like literally any selection of three stars.
Let's hear it for Turdus Solitarius, the solitary thrush. Named after an extinct flightless bird. I also would remove my own name if my name was ‘Turdus’.
And finally, let's hear it for one last disused constellation treat from John Hill. Uranoscopus, the stargazer fish that has eyes on top of its head for looking towards the skies, and seeing a constellation that looks like itself.
John Hill for a while yearned to be allowed to become a fellow of the Royal Society, which is a learned society for science that still exists in London. He didn’t get in, so he began writing basically a Royal Society Burn Book. He tried to make the society look scientifically ridiculous by getting it to print a letter titled “Pregancy without intercourse”, although at the time, in 1750, sexual intercourse was the only known way for a human to conceive.
He wrote the letter under an alias, pretending to be a midwife, claiming he had incontestable evidence of a woman becoming pregnant without any - quote - “commerce” with a man. He said he invented a special machine to collect airborne pregnancy bacteria, that turn out to be shaped like tiny men and women, then fed them to his chambermaid, kept her in a room that even male dogs were forbidden to enter, and waited for a baby to appear. He argued that the King should ban sex for a year, to test that pregnancy was indeed airborne.
This letter was printed all over Europe, and I don’t know if that was because they were fooled into believing in germ theory pregnancy, or because they realised it was a funny joke.
Those were some of our ex-constellations. Erstwhile stories in the stars, celestial palimpsests.
Exciting times over in the Allusioverse, which you can join at theallusionist.org/donate, because our regular livestreams are back for the autumn - these are where you hang out with me and my husband Martin for an hour on Youtube and we chat and have relaxing readings from reference books, like an extra Tranquillusionist, and Martin and I get to pretend that you are our children come home for the weekend, how we’ve missed you! And for added family fun, together we’re watching the current seasons of Great British Bake Off, which is much better as a group activity, and Taskmaster, wherein my brother Andy is attempting to do things which is always entertaining to watch. We also have some movie watchalongs coming up in October, in the Allusioverse Discord which is a very pleasant online gathering place. AND you members of the Allusioverse get behind the scenes info about the making of every episode, plus other sundries. All that, and the altruistic glow that comes from you helping to keep this show afloat financially! From just $2 a month? That is value! Head to theallusionist.org/donate.
Your randomly selected word from the dictionary today is…
ventifact, noun, geology: a stone shaped by the erosive action of wind-blown sand.
Try using ‘ventifact’ in an email today.
This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman. The music is composed by Martin Austwick of PaleBirdMusic.com and the podcast Neutrino Watch.
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