Astrée in the Sky — The Maiden, the Ear of Wheat and the Scales

Echoes of the Living World — Sky, science and human memory

Why have humans connected stars with imaginary lines? How did the sky serve as a calendar, compass and book of stories? And why do we find Astrée, the maiden, the ear of wheat and the scales among these celestial figures?

In one minute

• A constellation is now an officially defined region of the sky. The International Astronomical Union recognises 88.
• Stars in the same constellation may look close together from Earth while actually being separated by enormous distances.
• The zodiac is the band of sky through which the Sun, Moon and planets appear to move, close to the ecliptic.
• The twelve 30° astrological signs are not the same as the astronomical constellations, which are unequal in size.
• Astrée is one of the mythological figures traditionally associated with Virgo. Beside her, Libra evokes justice.
• A “shooting star” is not a star: it is a meteor, the streak of light produced when a small particle enters the atmosphere.
• The October Orionids come from dust left by Halley’s Comet. Their 2026 peak is expected during the night of 21–22 October.

Why did we connect the stars?

On a dark night, the sky seems filled with bright points with no obvious order. Yet for thousands of years humans have seen animals, heroes, objects, paths and characters among them.

Those drawings do not truly exist in space: we create them with our eyes. Two stars that appear close together may be hundreds of light-years apart. A constellation is therefore first of all a projection as seen from Earth.

But these patterns have been extraordinarily useful. They helped people memorise the sky, recognise the seasons, pass on stories and find directions. Long before modern maps, the sky was already a map.

88 constellations… but not 88 drawings in the sky

In the twentieth century, the International Astronomical Union standardised the sky into 88 official constellations. They are no longer merely silhouettes: each one corresponds to a precise region of the celestial sphere, with defined boundaries.

We must also distinguish a constellation from an asterism. The famous “Big Dipper”, for example, is only part of the constellation Ursa Major. An asterism is a familiar pattern of stars that is not necessarily an official constellation.

Quick guide
Constellation = official region of the sky.
Asterism = recognisable pattern formed by a few stars.

Why don’t we see the same constellations all year?

Earth rotates on its axis in about 24 hours and travels around the Sun in one year. As it moves along its orbit, the night side of our planet faces different directions in space.

That is why Orion dominates winter nights at our latitudes while other constellations become characteristic of spring or summer. The sky has seasons too.

The observer’s latitude also matters. Some constellations visible from the Southern Hemisphere never rise from France, and vice versa.

A star and a planet: what is the difference?

A star is an enormous sphere of very hot gas that produces energy through nuclear fusion. Our Sun is a star.

A planet does not produce visible light in this way: it mainly reflects the light of its star. Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn can therefore shine brightly in our sky without being stars.

The Moon is neither a star nor a planet: it is Earth’s natural satellite, and it too reflects sunlight.

Why do stars twinkle more than planets?

A star is so far away that it appears to us almost as a point. Turbulent movements in the atmosphere continually bend its light, so its brightness and sometimes its colour seem to change very quickly.

Through a telescope, a planet has a tiny apparent disc. Light fluctuations from different parts of that disc tend to cancel one another out. A planet therefore usually twinkles less, although the effect can become noticeable again near the horizon.

The “Morning Star”… which is not a star

The traditional “Morning Star” or “Evening Star” is most often Venus. Because its orbit lies inside Earth’s orbit, we always see it relatively close to the Sun in our sky: either after sunset or before sunrise.

Its great brightness earned it these names, but astronomically Venus is very much a planet.

When we look at a star, are we looking into the past?

Yes. Light does not travel instantaneously: it moves at about 300,000 kilometres per second.

Sunlight takes a little more than eight minutes to reach us. Light from Sirius takes about 8.6 years. Light from the Andromeda Galaxy travels for about 2.5 million years before reaching our eyes.

So we never see the Universe “live”. We see it as it was when the light left the object we are observing.

“The star we see may already be dead”: true or false?

Possible, but often exaggerated. A very distant star may have evolved since its light began its journey. However, most stars visible to the naked eye are close enough and live long enough that it would be wrong to assume they are probably already dead.

Stars nevertheless have a life story. Depending on their mass, they may end as white dwarfs, neutron stars or, for some of the most massive ones, after a supernova explosion.

The Milky Way: that great pale band

The milky band crossing a truly dark sky is our own galaxy, the Milky Way. We live inside its disc. When we look along the plane of that disc, our line of sight meets so many distant stars that together they form a diffuse glow to the naked eye.

Unfortunately, light pollution from towns and roads erases much of this spectacle.

The sky as a compass

Long before GPS, navigators learned to find their way using the stars.

In the Northern Hemisphere, Polaris, the North Star, currently lies close to the north celestial pole. It therefore seems almost motionless while the other stars appear to rotate around it. Its height above the horizon gives an approximate measure of the observer’s latitude.

Sailors later used instruments for measuring angles: astrolabes, quadrants and then sextants. With a sextant, accurate astronomical tables and reliable timekeeping from a marine chronometer, it is possible to determine a position at sea.

In the Southern Hemisphere there is no bright equivalent of Polaris exactly at the pole. The Southern Cross and other markers can nevertheless be used to estimate the direction of the south celestial pole.

What instruments can we use to observe the sky?

The first instrument is the eye. It provides a wide field of view and allows us to recognise constellations, planets, phases of the Moon and meteor showers.

Binoculars are remarkably effective too: they reveal more stars, star clusters, some of Jupiter’s moons and many details that cannot be seen with the naked eye.

Telescopes mainly fall into two broad families: refracting telescopes, which use lenses, and reflecting telescopes, which use mirrors. Modern observatories also work in wavelengths invisible to our eyes: radio waves, infrared, ultraviolet, X-rays and gamma rays.

Spectroscopy allows us to break light into its components and extract astonishing information from it: temperature, chemical composition, motion and speed of a celestial object.

Are there peoples “closer to the stars”?

Not in the physical sense: a few kilometres of altitude make almost no difference compared with astronomical distances. But some societies developed an especially detailed relationship with the sky because it was essential to navigation, calendars or culture.

Polynesian navigators, for example, passed on systems of wayfinding based on stars, ocean swells, winds, birds and other natural signs. Mesopotamian astronomers recorded the movements of celestial bodies over centuries. Many Indigenous traditions also created sky maps and stories that do not correspond to the Greco-Roman constellations.

There is therefore no single cultural sky: there is one celestial vault and many human ways of reading it.

Why do we talk about the signs of the zodiac?

The word zodiac comes from the Greek zōdiakos kyklos, which can be understood as the “circle of animal figures” or living beings.

Seen from Earth, the Sun appears to follow a line across the sky over the course of a year called the ecliptic. The planets and the Moon also remain, with some variation, within a band fairly close to this line because the Solar System is broadly organised around a common plane.

Mesopotamian and later Greek civilisations structured this celestial band. Western astrology divided it into twelve equal 30-degree sectors, the twelve signs.

But astrological signs and astronomical constellations are not the same. The real constellations vary greatly in size and, according to modern astronomical boundaries, the Sun also passes through the constellation Ophiuchus.

There is another difference: Earth’s rotational axis slowly changes direction, rather like the axis of a spinning top. This precession follows a cycle of about 26,000 years and gradually shifts the position of the equinoxes relative to the stars. This is one reason why traditional astrological signs no longer directly match the constellations visible on the same dates.

Remember
Astronomy studies celestial objects through observation and the physical sciences.
Astrology is a system of beliefs and symbolic interpretation. The two share an ancient history, but today they no longer belong to the same method of inquiry.

Astrée: the maiden, the ear of wheat and the scales

This is where our story meets that of the Chevaliers de l’Astrée.

In Greek mythology and the traditions that followed it, Astrée is associated with justice, innocence and the Golden Age. Genealogies and stories vary between authors, but a long-standing tradition connects her with the constellation Virgo.

Beside her lies Libra, the only zodiac constellation representing an object rather than a living being. The association between the maiden and the scales of justice became a natural part of Western imagery.

Spica, Virgo’s ear of wheat

The brightest star in Virgo is Spica, whose Latin name means “ear of wheat”. In traditional representations, the young woman holds this ear in her hand.

The image becomes especially rich: a maiden, justice, a pair of scales and an ear of wheat. The sky thus brings together the order of the world and that which nourishes humankind.

Libra has preserved the memory of Scorpio

Two important stars in Libra bear the Arabic names Zubenelgenubi and Zubeneschamali, traditionally interpreted as the southern claw and northern claw. These names recall a time when the stars were associated with the claws of neighbouring Scorpio, before Libra became fully distinguished as a separate constellation.

Constellations are therefore not merely drawings: their names preserve successive layers of history.

Why do we say someone was “born under a lucky star”?

The expression belongs to Europe’s old astrological tradition. For centuries, people assumed that the configuration of the sky at the moment of birth could foretell a favourable or unfavourable destiny.

Today, being “born under a lucky star” no longer requires belief in astrology: it simply means being fortunate or benefiting from happy circumstances.

Why does the French word “canicule” have something to do with a dog?

The French word canicule comes from the Latin canicula, “little dog”, an old name associated with Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky and the principal star of Canis Major, the Great Dog.

In the ancient Mediterranean world, the seasonal return of Sirius to the morning sky coincided with the period of intense summer heat. The “Dog Days” therefore became associated with the hottest days.

Sirius does not, of course, cause the heat. The connection is historical and seasonal, not physical.

A shooting star is not a star

A shooting star is the luminous phenomenon called a meteor. It appears when a small particle from space enters the atmosphere at very high speed. The compressed, heated air around it, together with ablation of the material, produces the streak of light.

The small body before it enters the atmosphere is a meteoroid. If a fragment reaches the ground, it is called a meteorite.

When many meteors appear to come from the same region of the sky at a particular time, we call it a meteor shower. Their apparent point of origin is called the radiant. Their paths seem to diverge from this point for the same reason parallel railway tracks appear to meet in the distance: it is an effect of perspective.

What is a comet?

A comet is neither a star nor a planet, and certainly not an enormous shooting star.

It is a small Solar System body made of ices, dust, rock and carbon compounds. As long as it remains far from the Sun, a comet is dark and inconspicuous.

Why does it have a tail?

When a comet approaches the Sun, it warms up. Some of its ice changes directly into gas: this is sublimation. An envelope of gas and dust, the coma, forms around the nucleus.

Two main tails can then appear: a dust tail, often curved, and an ion tail, usually straighter. Solar radiation and the solar wind push them in the direction away from the Sun.

This is counter-intuitive: a comet’s tail does not simply “trail behind it”. Its direction depends above all on the Sun.

Where do comets come from?

Many short-period comets are linked to icy regions beyond Neptune, notably the Kuiper Belt. Very long-period comets may come from a much more distant region, the Oort Cloud, a vast hypothetical reservoir surrounding the Solar System.

Halley: the comet we can see even when it is not there

Comet 1P/Halley returns to the inner Solar System roughly every 76 years. It was observed in 1986 and is expected to return in 2061.

Each time it passes, Halley leaves dust along its orbit. Earth later crosses some of these streams. The grains produce two well-known meteor showers: the Eta Aquariids in spring and the Orionids in October.

Look up on 21–22 October 2026: the Orionids

In 2026, the Orionids are active from 2 October to 7 November, with their peak expected during the night of 21–22 October. Under a dark sky, NASA gives an order of magnitude of about 10 to 20 meteors per hour. Their entry speed is remarkable: about 66 km/s, or nearly 238,000 km/h.

They appear to radiate from the region of Orion, but they do not come from that constellation. Orion is only a perspective marker. Their true origin is dust left by Halley.

A date with the sky
To observe a meteor shower, it is best to move away from artificial lights, allow your eyes about twenty minutes to adapt to the dark, and watch a broad area of the sky rather than staring only at the radiant. The number actually visible will always depend on cloud, the Moon and light pollution.

Can a comet hit Earth?

Yes, it is physically possible, but such events are very rare.

Some comets follow orbits that cross or approach Earth’s orbit. A collision would, however, require both bodies to be in the same place at the same time. Astronomers monitor small Solar System bodies and calculate their trajectories to identify objects that could present a risk.

This scenario should not be confused with a meteor shower: the particles responsible for the Orionids are generally tiny and disappear in the atmosphere.

The sky for real — Shoemaker-Levy 9 hits Jupiter

In July 1994, astronomers witnessed a historic event: fragments of a comet struck Jupiter before their eyes.

Shoemaker-Levy 9, discovered in 1993 by Carolyn and Gene Shoemaker and David Levy, had been captured by Jupiter’s gravity. During a very close passage in July 1992, the giant planet’s tidal forces tore it apart into more than twenty fragments.

From 16 to 22 July 1994, those fragments entered Jupiter’s atmosphere one after another at about 60 km/s. The impacts produced immense plumes, some rising around 2,000 to 3,000 kilometres above the clouds.

The Hubble Space Telescope observed the dark scars left in the atmosphere. Fragment G, one of the largest, created a region whose dark central spot was about 2,500 kilometres in diameter. Researchers later used the debris as tracers to study winds in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere.

It was the first time humanity had the means to directly observe a collision between two Solar System bodies.

Remember
The Solar System is not a frozen backdrop. Planets, asteroids and comets continue to cross paths, evolve and sometimes collide.

Looking at the sky without a telescope

You can learn an enormous amount with very little equipment. Start by identifying one or two reliable landmarks: Ursa Major, Polaris, Orion in winter, the Summer Triangle during the warmer months.

Move as far as possible from direct lighting. The eye takes time to regain its night sensitivity after exposure to bright light. A star chart or an app can help, provided you turn the screen brightness right down.

Above all, do not try to recognise everything in a single evening. The sky becomes familiar like a landscape: by meeting it again and again.

The Scribe’s view

For a very long time, we looked up to know where we were.

A sailor searched for north. A farmer waited for a season. A traveller recognised a star. A storyteller placed a maiden, an ear of wheat or a pair of scales among them.

Today we have satellites, atomic clocks and maps capable of locating us to within a few metres. Yet when the sky is dark enough, the old reflex remains: we look up.

And we begin connecting the dots again.

The Scribe’s little seed

On your next clear night, choose just one constellation. Find it, then come back a few weeks later at the same time.

It will have moved.

In reality, it is mostly we who will have moved on.

Sources and reference points

• International Astronomical Union — constellations and the official division of the sky: iau.org
• NASA Science — 1P/Halley: science.nasa.gov
• NASA Science — Orionids Meteor Shower: science.nasa.gov
• NASA Science — Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9: science.nasa.gov
• NASA / Hubble — A Large Comet Impact on Jupiter: science.nasa.gov
• CNRTL — etymology of the French words “canicule” and “caniculaire”: cnrtl.fr