Corona Borealis

'The Northern Crown'. It's name makes perfect sense considering that everyone knows the Northern Lights are called Aurora Borealis then Borealis definitely means North and Aurora being light. All things considered, 'crown' must be corona. It struck me when I made this realization that Corona, the popular light beer brewed in Mexico, holds the name of crown.

There is also a Southern Crown constellation but I chose the northern because it's in my own hemisphere, therefore I'll actually be able to look into the sky and see it. This way I get to familiarize myself with it's shape and location by simply writing this article and finding it in our night sky shouldn't be difficult, especially with the help of the SkyGazer software from this astronomy class.

To the facts now, then, Corona Borealis is a constellation made up of 6 stars that form a semicircular arc and are located near Hercules and Boötes, it's brightest star being Alphecca. It's not an overly exciting constellation, there aren't any deep sky bright objects in it, and no first magnitude stars but it's still my second favourite just because it's a crown. In depth reasoning for the favourtism, I know. Mythologically, this constellation was considered to represent the crown that was given by Dionysus (the Greek god of wine and a son of Zeus) to Ariadne, the daughter of Minos of Crete. It's also said to belong to Boötes, which would make sense since it's right next to him in the sky.

All things considered, I admire it for how closely it looks like the object it was named after, the stars representing not only its shape but the jewels on the royal crown. I've always had a fascination with monarchical jewels and finding one in the sky was pleasing to me.