Find the star by its story

Pollux burns with a steady orange hue at 33.8 light-years away, in the constellation of Gemini. In Greek myth he was the immortal twin, son of Zeus and brother of the mortal Castor; the sky chose to set the two side by side so that neither would be left alone after the first of them died. Its warm glow, which crosses European winter skies almost a century after leaving the star, departed at a time when mechanical clocks were just beginning to order the quiet life of medieval cathedrals.

Diadem shines in Coma Berenices, the head of hair that the Egyptian queen Berenice offered to Aphrodite and that the astronomer Conon of Samos placed into the sky as a constellation. It is a yellow-white F-type star about 58 light-years away — one of the rare constellations whose mythological origin is actually historical rather than legendary, since Berenice II lived in the third century BCE.

p Eridani is an intimate binary system: two orange K-class stars orbiting each other in the celestial river of Eridanus, barely 26 light-years away. They are dwarfs cooler and smaller than our Sun, near neighbours on the galactic scale, and a modest telescope is enough to split them into an orange-and-yellow pair. Their light crosses the space between us in just over two and a half decades.

On the flank of Auriga burns a pair of golden fire. Two G-type suns dance too close for the eye to split them apart —barely 42 light-years away—. The light reaching the atmosphere tonight set out when the first transistors were rewriting electronics, in the heart of the postwar years. A stellar intimacy disguised as a single point, forever caught in the Charioteer.

Porrima, in the constellation Virgo, is a yellow star just 38 light-years from the Earth: a very close neighbour by cosmic standards, almost on the doorstep of the Solar System. It carries the name of one of the ancient Roman Camenae, minor goddesses who sang the future and watched over women in labour during childbirth, a humble yet crucial role in the domestic religion of Rome. Its steady, gentle light has been crossing European spring skies since long before photography had even been invented in its most rudimentary form anywhere.

Pollux burns with a steady orange hue at 33.8 light-years away, in the constellation of Gemini. In Greek myth he was the immortal twin, son of Zeus and brother of the mortal Castor; the sky chose to set the two side by side so that neither would be left alone after the first of them died. Its warm glow, which crosses European winter skies almost a century after leaving the star, departed at a time when mechanical clocks were just beginning to order the quiet life of medieval cathedrals.

Scheat marks one of the corners of the Great Square of Pegasus and takes its name from the Arabic word for «leg» or «shin». It is a red variable giant: an ancient star pulsing slowly, shifting in brightness over months like a tired heart. At 196 light-years, its reddish light set out when Napoleon was still only a shadow in European history books.

Acamar, in the long celestial river of Eridanus, was for centuries the «end of the river» to the Greeks: the last star visible before the constellation sank entirely below the Mediterranean horizon every night. Further south, in the age of the great oceanic voyages, the dazzling Achernar was discovered, and Acamar silently lost its old rank without ever protesting the demotion. Today it shines white at 161 light-years away, a quiet reminder that the edges of the sky shift with the observer's latitude and with every new route opened across the open sea.

Dubhe is the first of the Plough's two «pointer» stars, the imaginary line that, extended five times, leads to the Pole Star. Its name comes from the Arabic «ẓahr al-dubb», the back of the bear, and at 122.9 light-years it burns a yellow-white like a beacon. Seafaring peoples on three continents have used its twin lanterns to rebuild north when everything else failed.

Canopus burns in the keel of the ship Argo with a fierce yellow-white glow, the second-brightest beacon of the entire night sky. Ancient mariners steered by it across southern oceans, and modern spacecraft still lock onto its light to find their bearings in the void. The glimmer reaching Earth tonight left Carina around 1716, when much of the world remained uncharted.

Rigel blazes as a blue supergiant at Orion's foot, one of the brightest beacons of the winter sky. Its searing white light travels 863 years to reach us: what shines tonight above the horizon left the star when medieval cathedrals were still rising stone by stone across Europe. The name comes from the Arabic «riǧl al-jabbār», 'the foot of the giant', preserved by the astronomers who mapped Orion the hunter centuries ago.

Alkaid closes the handle of the Big Dipper, the last sentinel of the seven-star procession that has guided generations toward the north. Its name, from the Arabic «al-qā'id», means «the leader» — or, in the older reading, «the chief of the mourners» in the funeral cortege medieval imagination saw in the constellation. A hot blue-white youngster 104 light-years away, it burns with the clean fury of a B-class star.

Theta Carinae is the brightest jewel of IC 2602, the open cluster astronomers call the Southern Pleiades. A hot blue subgiant, far younger than the Sun, it leads its sister stars across the southern sky in a choreography born barely thirty million years ago. Its cold, electric light travels some 455 years to reach us, carrying the reflection of a swarm of freshly kindled stars in the constellation of the Keel.

Matar belongs to the asterism of Pegasus, a yellow class-G star lying 214 light-years away, similar in colour to the Sun but markedly more evolved. Its name comes from the Arabic «sa'd al-matar», the lucky one of rain, a reference that links medieval astronomy with agricultural weather: at the time, the heliacal rising of this star announced damp seasons in the desert. Today it lingers as a golden wink among the constellations of the northern autumn.

Omicron Velorum is the brightest star of the open cluster IC 2391, a small constellation within the constellation: dozens of young suns, siblings born from the same cloud, scattered against the field of Vela. Hot and blue, only tens of millions of years old, it sits at the centre of a swarm that the unaided eye still picks up as a faint patch under dark southern skies.

Nashira means 'bearer of good tidings' in Arabic, a meaning rare among stellar names, most of which are descriptive or anatomical. A white A-class variable at 157 light-years, she lies in Capricorn, where the ecliptic carries the Moon and planets on their monthly transit. The etymology reminds us that the sky, long before being science, was omen.