Coma Berenices, Berenice’s Hair, is a faint northern constellation of the spring sky, the shimmering hair of an Egyptian queen made into stars.
At a glance
| stars in the figure | 3 |
|---|---|
| nearest star of the figure | Beta Comae Berenices, 29.8 light-years (9.13 pc) |
| farthest star of the figure | Gamma Comae Berenices, 167 light-years (51.3 pc) |
| depth | the farthest is 5.6 × farther than the nearest |
Read off the piece’s own catalogue, the same values it draws with.
About Coma Berenices
The figure honours Berenice, a queen of Egypt who, the story goes, cut off her hair as an offering for her husband’s safe return from war. When the hair vanished from the temple, the court astronomer Conon of Samos declared that it had been placed among the stars. For a long time it was counted as the tuft at the end of Leo’s tail, and only later became a constellation in its own right.
The hair itself is the Coma Star Cluster, a wide, sparse group of faint stars close enough to cover a large patch of sky, best seen in binoculars. Diadem, the queen’s jewel, and Beta Comae Berenices, a near neighbour much like the Sun, are among the figure’s stars.
Coma Berenices lies in the direction of the north galactic pole, looking straight out of the disc of the Milky Way, where little dust stands in the way. That is why it is so rich in galaxies: it holds part of the great Virgo Cluster and, farther off, the Coma Cluster of galaxies.
What you see in the piece
The figure is a right angle of three stars. Flown out to, Beta Comae Berenices stays close to the Sun while Gamma Comae Berenices lies several times deeper, and the corner of the angle no longer exists.
Questions
Who was Berenice?
A queen of ancient Egypt whose hair, offered in a temple and then lost, was said by the astronomer Conon of Samos to have been set among the stars.
How far away are the stars of Coma Berenices?
The nearest star of the figure is Beta Comae Berenices, 29.8 light-years (9.13 pc) away; the farthest is Gamma Comae Berenices, 167 light-years (51.3 pc).