Constellations · Constellation · Coronae Borealis · CrB
Constellation
Corona Borealis
The northern crown — a small, lovely semicircle of stars. Its one star that sleeps for 80 years and then flares is overdue.
- Genitive
- Coronae Borealis
- Area
- 179 square degrees · 73rd of 88
- Brightest star
- Alphecca · magnitude 2.22
- Naked-eye stars
- 38 brighter than magnitude 6.5
- Highest at midnight
- mid May
Myth
The crown Dionysus gave the Cretan princess Ariadne on their wedding, after Theseus had abandoned her on Naxos. He threw it into the sky.
Look for
Its brightest star is Alphecca, “the bright one of the broken ring”. In Aboriginal and Shawnee traditions the ring is a boomerang, and a circle of dancing sisters.
Science
T Coronae Borealis, the “Blaze Star”, is a recurrent nova. It erupted to naked-eye brightness in 1866 and 1946, eighty years apart, and astronomers expected it to do so again in the mid-2020s.