Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Tuesday, April 19th.  The sun rises at 6:52.  It’ll be up for 13 hours and 39 minutes, setting at 8:32.   The moon, 2 days past full, will rise at 11:05 this evening.

The Greeks and Romans who saw the Great Bear, the constellation we call Ursa Major, they also saw it having a long tail.  We’re more likely to see the Big Dipper.  The bowl of the Big Dipper is the bear’s rump, while the handle is that notorious tail.  The Big Dipper is overhead at 10 p.m. this evening.  Now, to how did the ancient Romans explained the long tail.  According to one story a god threw the bear into the sky.  I don’t care if you’re immortal or not, you wouldn’t grab the end of the bear with the teeth.  However grabbing the tail apparently caused the tail to stretch, giving the long tail we see in our skies.  While the skies are dark before moonrise, check out the bear.  He’s all there from the tip of his nose to the end of his claws.

* Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.  They may be different for your location.

Addendum

Here’s a quotation from Star Names Their Lore and Meaning by Richard Hinckley Allen:

The long tail of the Bear, a queer appendage to a comparitively taillessanimal, is thus accounted for by old Thomas Hood in his didactic style:

Scholar.

I marvell why (seeing she hath the forme of a beare) her tail should be so long.

Master.

Imagine that Jupiter, fearing to come too nigh unto her teeth, layde hold of her tayle, and thereby drew her up into heaven; so that she of herself being very weightie, and the distance from the earth to the heavens very great, there was a great likelihood that her taile must stretch.  Other reason I know none.

My rather crude drawing of Ursa Major, the Great Bear