- Star Tales - Crater (ianridpath.com)
- Star Tales - Hydra (ianridpath.com)
Hydra is the largest of the 88 constellations, winding over a quarter of the way around the sky. Its head is south of the constellation Cancer, the crab, while the tip of its tail lies between Libra, the scales, and Centaurus, the centaur. The total length from its westernmost boundary to the easternmost one is 102°.5. Yet for all its size there is nothing prominent about Hydra. Its only star of note is second-magnitude Alphard, a name that comes from the Arabic al-fard appropriately meaning ‘the solitary one’. Bode on his Uranographia atlas gave it the alternative name Unuk es Schudscha, from the Arabic unuk al-shujā, neck of the serpent. Both names were originally given by al-Ṣūfī in his Book of the Fixed Stars (AD 964).
- Star Tales - Leo (ianridpath.com)
Eratosthenes and Hyginus both affirm that the lion was placed in the sky because it is the king of beasts. Mythologically speaking, this is reputed to be the lion of Nemea, slain by Heracles as the first of his 12 labours. Nemea is a town some way south-west of Corinth. There the lion lived in a cave with two mouths, emerging to carry off the local inhabitants, who were becoming scarce. The lion was an invulnerable beast of uncertain parentage; it was variously said to have been sired by the dog Orthrus, the monster Typhon, or even to be the offspring of Selene, the Moon goddess. Its skin was proof against all weapons, as Heracles found when he shot an arrow at the lion and saw that it simply bounced off.
- A faint constellation south of Leo, introduced by the Polish astronomer Johannes Hevelius in his star catalogue of 1687 under the name Sextans Uraniae and depicted in his star atlas published posthumously in 1690. It commemorated the instrument he used for measuring star positions, which was destroyed along with other instruments in a fire at his home in 1679. In his book Machina Coelestis (1673) he provided an engraving of himself displaying his sextant at his rooftop observatory, which was built over three adjoining properties he owned in the present-day Korzenna Street, Danzig (the modern Gdańsk).
- Texas (Wikipedia)
Texas (/ˈtɛksəs/ TEK-səss, locally also /ˈtɛksɪz/ TEK-siz; Spanish: Texas or Tejas) is the most populous state in the South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the west, and has an international border with the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas to the south and southwest. Texas has a coastline on the Gulf of Mexico to the southeast. Covering 268,596 square miles (695,660 km2) and with over 31 million residents as of 2024, it is the second-largest state by area and population. Texas is nicknamed the Lone Star State for its former status as the independent Republic of Texas.