Phoenix (lat.Phoenix, Phe)

is a constellation in the southern hemisphere of the sky. It occupies an area of 469.3 square degrees in the sky, contains 68 stars visible to the naked eye. If nothing interferes with observations, up to 40 stars can be distinguished with the naked eye in the Phoenix constellation, but only six of them are brighter than the fourth magnitude.

Four stars form a rhomboid, from the western top of which an arc of three fainter stars “emerges”. It is very difficult to see in this geometric figure that mythical Phoenix bird, which burned itself once every five hundred years to be reborn from the ashes young and renewed, in the form of which this constellation was depicted in ancient astronomy manuals.

Rising along the southern horizon, Phoenix, an obscure constellation, spreads its wings into the night sky around ten p.m. Although the constellation will never fully rise in the northern hemisphere, most of it can be seen only at Samhain (Halloween) , remaining true to its elusive mythological nature. last year, 2022, there was just such a night, without the moon, which was very strange, because the next day I saw the moon and she was at the age of “a woman of Balzac’s age”, if there were cycles of the moon with the cycle of a woman’s life. But back to the stars, this is an indescribable sight. After that, personally, I will wait every year. The phoenix, a mythical bird that rises from its own ashes once every five hun- dred years, is self-created through parthenogenesis and is said to complete the cycle of death and rebirth through fire. It is described as a gigantic bird with resem- blances to the peacock, pheasant, and eagle, with a prominent crest and spec- tacular plumage that includes all the colors of the rainbow. An extraordinarily gen- tle creature, the phoenix is said to feed only on air, which incidentally is also the food of fire. Descriptions of the phoenix appear in several different mythologies, Egyptian, Greek, and Mesopotamian among them. In Egypt the phoenix is called Bennu and is depicted in hieroglyphs as a heron-like bird. Sacred to Osiris and Ra, the Bennu makes its home inside the obelisk and represents resurrection and the morning star. Its ashes are said to ignite in Heliopolis upon the altar within the temple of the sun. Varying accounts say the Greek historian Herodotus observed the living phoenix, while other versions claim that he never did see the bird, but that its fantastic reputation inspired him to include references to it in his writing .

A Field Book of the Stars by William Tyler Olcott
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