Abstract
Johannes Hevelius created “Vulpecula cum Ansere” (the Little Fox with the Goose) out of unformed stars in the space between Cygnus and Aquila. The constellation first appeared in Firmamentum Sobiescianum sive Uranographia (1687) and the accompanying introductory text, Prodromus astronomiae (1690). To emphasize that it was his own creation, Hevelius dedicated Figure L to the pair, shown as a detail in Fig. 3.1. In atlases published before Hevelius, its stars are shown simply marking the flow of the Milky Way through the area. Ian Ridpath (1989) noted that “Hevelius placed the fox near two other hunting animals, the eagle (the constellation Aquila) and the vulture (which was an alternative identification for Lyra). He explained that the fox was taking the goose to neighbouring Cerberus, another of his inventions.” Richard Hinckley Allen (1899) put the total number of constituent stars identified by Hevelius at 27, while the German astronomers Friedrich Argelander (1843) and Eduard Heis (1872) recorded 37 and 62 stars, respectively, in their later catalogs.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
“Steht zwischen dem Pfeil und Schwan, mitten in der hier getheilten Milchstrasse, und gehört zu den neuen von Hevel eingeführten Sternbildern. Die kenntlichtsten Sterne in diesem Bilde sind nur von der vierten und fünften Grösse. Beym Kopf entdeckte Hevel im Jahr 1670 einen neuen Stern dritter Grösse, er war nur einige Monate sichtbar.”
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The “Great Rift”, a thin ribbon of obscuring dust that appears to divide the Galaxy into two branches in this region of the sky.
- 4.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 5, No. 65, 2087 (1670).
- 5.
Shara, M.M. and Moffat, A.F.J., “The recovery of CK Vulpeculae (Nova 1670)—The oldest ‘old nova”’ Astrophysical Journal Letters 258, 41–44 (1982).
- 6.
This is the well-known planetary nebula Messier 27, aka the “Dumbbell Nebula.”
- 7.
Etymologies, Book 12, 2:29.
- 8.
De proprietatibus rerum, book 17.
- 9.
Reynard was the trickster hero of the ballad The Romance of Reynard the Fox.
- 10.
The Stymphalian birds (Στυ\(\upmu\)φαλίδες ὄ\(\uprho\)νιθες; Stymphalídes órnithes) were fierce, man-eating birds that Eurystheus sent Heracles to defeat in his Sixth Labour. Kept as pets by Ares, the god of war, they were said to have beaks of bronze and sharp, metallic feathers they launched at their victims. As if to add insult to injury, their droppings were said to be toxic.
- 11.
It may also be no coincidence that the character “Swiper” on the 1990s PBS children’s show Dora The Explorer is a fox wearing a robber’s face mask.
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Barentine, J.C. (2016). Anser. In: The Lost Constellations. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22795-5_3
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