The Stars of Spring

Abstract

Shortly after Canis Major is fully visible in the southeast, Leo puts in an appearance in the east. Thus he is well up in the evening sky by midwinter. Leo is a constellation of two parts, each a well-recognized asterism. The head and front quarters of the lion resemble a sickle. When it is high in the sky, the sickle is upright and the handle extends downward to the first-magnitude star Regulus. The sickle rises in the east on its side and is followed about an hour later by three stars forming a right triangle. This latter group represents the hindquarters and tail of the beast. The brightest of the three is Denebola, a second-magnitude star at the tail. Some of the stars in the sickle and the triangle are not very bright, but the two together make up one of the best-known constellations in the sky (see the figure on page 80).