At 8 p.m., astronomical twilight has ended, and the moon is out of the early evening sky. This is a good time to see Cassiopeia the Queen of Ethiopia and Cepheus the King of Ethiopia.
Cassiopeia is high in the northeast, nearly directly north at that time. Cassiopeia mainly consists of six bright stars and looks like a chair, squished M, or squished W depending on her location in the sky.
West of Cassiopeia and directly north is Cepheus, which is faint.
It is just below Polaris, the North Star. Polaris’s fame lies from its chance position near the North Celestial Pole. It is not the brightest star in the sky, though it is a bright star. If the sky is clear, I can easily see Polaris from my house every night of the year, no matter the phase of the moon.
People are also reading…
Cassiopeia and Cepheus were legendary rulers of a kingdom that is supposed to have stretched from present-day Syria down to the shores of the Red Sea. Their daughter was Andromeda, and her husband was Perseus, all of whom are now in the sky.
Bright Cassiopeia gets top billing over dim Cepheus. To me, Cepheus looks like a misshapen pentagon, sort of a triangle sitting on top of a square with the triangle pointed toward the north.
A wonderful stretch of the Milky Way runs through Cassiopeia and Cepheus, with many superb star clusters and nebulae favored by amateur astronomers.
