One W of stars has been a queen, a camel, and elk antlers
Greeks saw a boastful queen chained to a spinning throne. Arab stargazers saw a camel's hump and a henna-dyed hand. Chinese astronomers saw a chariot and its whip, the Sámi an elk antler, the Chukchi five reindeer stags. All of them were looking at the same five bright stars.
Cassiopeia's zigzag of five bright stars makes it among the easiest patterns to find in the northern sky. North of latitude 34 degrees it never sets, and in tropical regions it is best seen from September to early November. Ptolemy included it among his 48 constellations in the 2nd century, and it survives among the 88 recognised today. The name comes from the queen of Aethiopia, wife of Cepheus and mother of Andromeda, who bragged that her daughter, or she herself, outshone the sea nymphs. Poseidon punished her by fixing her in the heavens to circle the pole on her throne, half the time hanging on to avoid tumbling off, and ordered Andromeda chained to a rock for the monster Cetus until Perseus rescued her.
Other peoples filled the same space differently. The Persian astronomer al-Sufi drew a crowned queen with a crescent-topped staff alongside a two-humped camel, and a 1679 French atlas by Augustin Royer gave her a marble throne and a palm leaf. Chinese sky-watchers spread the stars across three regions and saw the Bridge of the Kings and the great chariot Wang-Liang, with Gamma Cassiopeiae as the driver's whip. Welsh tradition called it the Court of Dôn, and 17th-century Christian mapmakers tried out Bathsheba, Deborah and Mary Magdalene.
The physics is just as rich. Schedar, the brightest star, shines at magnitude 2.2, and the region contains some of the most luminous stars known, including yellow hypergiants. Tycho Brahe's supernova blazed here in 1572, and Cassiopeia A, another supernova remnant, is the strongest radio source beyond the solar system above 1 GHz.
Planets turn up too: fourteen star systems in the constellation have them, with HD 219134 believed to host six. A dense stretch of the Milky Way crosses the area, packed with open clusters and nebulae, and the irregular galaxy IC 10 is the closest starburst galaxy yet found, as well as the sole example within our own Local Group.
Source: Cassiopeia (constellation)
