Page:Field Book of Stars.djvu/36

 HYDRA (hi'-dra)— THE SEA-SERPENT. (Face South and Southwest.)

—The head of Hydra, a striking and beautiful arrangement of stars, lies just below the Bee Hive in ../Cancer/, 6 degrees south of Acubens in that constellation, and forms a rhomboidal figure of five stars.

Hydra is about 100 degrees in length and reaches almost from ../Canis Minor/ to ../Libra/. Its stars are all faint except Alphard, or the Hydra's heart, a second-magnitude star remarkable for its lonely situation, southwest of Regulus in ../Leo/. A line drawn from (γ) Leonis through Regulus points it out. It is of a rich orange tint. Castor and Pollux in ../Gemini/ point southeast to it.

The constellations ../Crater/, the Cup, and ../Corvus/, the Crow, both stand on the coils of Hydra, south of Denebola, the bright star in the tail of the Lion.

Hydra is supposed to be the snake shown on a uranographic stone from the Euphrates, 1200 B.C. 14