Astronomy Without a Telescope
- Star Tales - Cygnus (ianridpath.com)
A popular name for Cygnus is the Northern Cross, and indeed its shape is far larger and more distinctive than the famous Southern Cross. In its cruciform shape the Greeks visualized the long neck, outstretched wings, and stubby tail of a swan flying along the Milky Way, in which it is embedded. Aratus’s description of it as being hazy or misty in parts is no doubt a reference to the Milky Way running through it. The mythographers tell us that the swan is Zeus in disguise, on his way to one of his innumerable love affairs, but his exact quarry is a subject of some disagreement.
- Barack Obama (allthetropes.org)
Barack Obama was the 44th President of the United States of America, succeeding George W. Bush. Born in Honolulu to a white American mother and a Kenyan father, he spent his childhood in Indonesia and Hawaii before attending Harvard Law School and eventually settling in Chicago, where he worked as a community organizer and a college professor before being elected to the state Senate in 1996, and from there to the U.S. Senate in 2004.
- Cygnus (constellation) (Wikipedia)
Cygnus is a northern constellation on the plane of the Milky Way, deriving its name from the Latinized Greek word for swan. Cygnus is one of the most recognizable constellations of the northern summer and autumn, and it features a prominent asterism known as the Northern Cross (in contrast to the Southern Cross). Cygnus was among the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations.
