Constellations · Constellation · Virginis · Vir
Constellation
Virgo
The maiden holding an ear of wheat — the harvest goddess. Behind her lies a cluster of more than a thousand galaxies.
- Genitive
- Virginis
- Area
- 1,294 square degrees · 2nd of 88
- Brightest star
- Spica · magnitude 0.98
- Naked-eye stars
- 172 brighter than magnitude 6.5
- Highest at midnight
- early April
Myth
Often Demeter, or her daughter Persephone: the goddess of the harvest, whose disappearance into the sky each winter was said to bring the barren season.
History
Hipparchus discovered the precession of the Earth’s axis around 130 BC by noticing that Spica had shifted by two degrees since earlier measurements.
Look for
Between Denebola and Vindemiatrix lies the heart of the Virgo Cluster. A telescope sweep turns up faint galaxy after faint galaxy — one of them, M 87, holds the first black hole ever photographed.