The constellation Serpens

The constellation Serpens

Serpens lies in the northern and southern hemispheres and can be seen from anywhere. Its brightest star is called Unukalhai (Arabic: neck of the snake). It is the only constellation that is divided in two: the head (in the west) and the tail (in the east) are separated by Ophiuchus. Together with Ophiuchus, it has formed a unit since antiquity and is one of the oldest constellations. When the IAU laid down the boundaries of the constellations in 1930, Serpens remained a single constellation despite the division. In the tail of Serpens lies the Eagle Nebula M16 with the “Pillars of Creation”, which the Hubble Space Telescope made famous in 1995.

Mythology

The Greeks saw Ophiuchus as Asclepius, the god of medicine. His parents were Apollo, among other things god of healing, morality and music, and Coronis, a granddaughter of Ares, the god of war. Coronis, Apollo's lover, loved the mortal Ischys, however, and was unfaithful to Apollo with him, although she was already pregnant by Apollo. Apollo found out about this and caused the death of both of them. At the last second, Apollo himself (according to another tradition, Hermes) saved the child from the funeral pyre by cutting it out of its mother's womb, and gave it to Chiron, who raised Asclepius like his own son and taught him healing and hunting. One day a snake showed him a special healing herb: on Crete, the king's son had drowned in a jar of honey. When a snake crawled towards the body, Asclepius killed it with a staff. Then a second snake appeared with healing herbs and used them to bring the dead snake back to life. Asclepius placed the herbs on the dead boy, and the king's son woke up too. Later he is also said to have brought back to life the son of the hero Theseus, who had died in a fall from a chariot. With every resurrection the anger of Hades, the god of the underworld, grew, as he feared that the stream of souls might dry up. He complained to his brother Zeus, who struck Asclepius down with a bolt of lightning. In his anger, Apollo killed the three Cyclopes who forged Zeus's lightning bolts. To calm him, Zeus made Asclepius immortal and placed him in the sky together with the snake. The snake stands for his art of healing; because it sheds its skin every year and seems to be reborn, it is still the symbol of medicine today.