Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Pretty Pieces


Pieces, the fish, is my own astrological sign, and no matter what it may say about my personality and my fortune and all of that gibberish, no matter how good, I refuse to beleive it. There's lots of pretty pictures of the fish out there, and the constellation in our night's sky... but that's about it.
The word itself, pieces is latin for fish (surprise, surprise!) and as far as mythology goes, the constellation respresents two round objects tied to either ends of a string. In one version Aphrodite and her son, Eros, transformed into these fish to escape the monstrous Typhon. They were tied together with a cord so that they wouldn't lose each other.
The meteor shower that appears to come from the direction of the constellation is named Piscids and of its TWENTY-ONE stars (that's a hefty number for a constellation) it contains one Messier object (a.k.a. really special thing in the sky). However, good on the guys who named Pieces because it actually does look like two things connected by string that could easily be fish because of the more rounded ends of the V-shaped constellation. The only reason I can think of that normalcy is the possibility that when Pieces was found they had run out of wine.

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