The constellation Draco possibly has to do with this mythological complex. Could GD62 be a picture of Draco? Or perhaps rather the mirror image of Draco in the southern sky? "Dorado, the Goldfish, first published by Bayer among his new southern figures, is still known in Germany and Italy, but the French say Dorade; and Flammarion has Doradus, perhaps from confusion with its supposed genitive case. The word is from the Spanish, and refers not to out little exotic cyprinoid, but to the large coryphaena of the tropical seas, of changing colors at death." "The head of Dorado marks the south pole of the ecliptic, so that, according to Caesius, the constellation gave its name to that point as the Polus Doradinalis. Within 3o of this pole is the very remarkable nebula 30 Doradus, that Smyth called the True Lover's Knot, although now known as the Great Looped Nebula, N. G. C. 2070, described by Sir John Herschel as an assemblage of loops and one of the most extraordinary objects in the heavens, - 'the centre of a great spiral." "Delphinus, the Dolphin, is Dauphin in France, Delfino in Italy, and Delphin in Germany; all from the Greek Δελφίς and Δελφίν, transcribed by the Latins as Delphis and Delphin." "In Greece it also was Ιερος 'Ιχθύς, the Sacred Fish, the creature being of as much religious significance there as a fish afterwards became among the early Christians; and it was the sky emblem of philanthropy, not only from the classical stories connected with its prototype, but also from the latter's devotion to its young. It should be remembered that our stellar Dolphin is figured as the common cetacean, Dolphinus delphis, of Atlantic and Mediterranea waters, not the tropical Coryphaena that Dorado represents." "Delphinus lies east of Aquila, on the edge of the Milky Way, occupying, with the adjoining aqueous figures, the portion of the sky that Aratos called the Water. It culminates about the 15th of September. Caesius placed here the Leviathan of the 104th Psalm; Novidius, the Great Fish that swallowed Jonah, but Julius Schiller knew some of its stars as the Water-pots of Cana. Popularly it now is Job's Coffin, although the date and name of the inventor of this title I have not been able to learn. The Chinese called the four chief stars and ξ Kwa Chaou, a Gourd." "ε, a 4th magnitude, although lying near the dorsal fin of our present figure, bears the very common name Deneb, from Al Dhanab al Dulfim, the Dolphin's Tail. But in Arabia it also was Al 'Amud al Şalib, as marking the Pillar of the Cross. In China it was Pae Chaou, the Rotten Melon." (Allen) |