Naturalist Algol

The Perils of Pointing a Thought Through a Telescope

Long ago the star Algol in Perseus was regarded as deeply ill-omened. Its
name means "the ghoul," after the Arabic, al-Ra's al-Ghul, the Head of the
Ghoul.
Why the ancient astronomers thought it was evil is anybody's guess. Ancient
Hebrews called it Rosh ha Satan, Satan's Head. Worlds away, Chinese
astronomers called it Piled-up Corpses. The Romans used versions of Caput
Gorgonis, the Gorgon's Head, which gets to the heart of the matter, so to
speak: To the Greeks it was the eye of Medusa's head dangling bloody from
Perseus' hand.
Perseus, up there, is eternally rescuing Andromeda, just west of him. On his
way back from killing Medusa by cutting off her snake-ridden head, he
spotted Andromeda being tormented by sea creatures and snatched her away
by showing the monsters the Gorgon's face and turning them to stone.
We call this a "myth," a word scientists of the past century have made
synonymous with "falsehood."
In this spirit, some astronomers playfully turn the ancient astronomers' sense
of Algol's evil on its head, saying Algol is actually a "friendly" star because it
provides unique information. And information is good.
The prince of darkness is a gentleman, it's been observed.
This response from me, who's a doctor but not a scientist, could result in my
own demonization, or at least mean laughter. I'm of two minds about this.
One mind profoundly respects the scientific facts. Algol, apart from the
horrors its names allude to, is one of the fascinating stars. It was the first
"variable" star identified as an "eclipsing binary," meaning it varies between
brighter and dimmer because it is actually two stars orbiting each other and
the darker periodically eclipses the brighter. A third star circling the other two
sometimes jostles the eclipse.
What's weird, from a scientific viewpoint, is how often the eclipse happens:
every 2.8 days. The two stars whip around each other less than 6 million
miles apart (it's about 93 million miles from the Earth to the sun). The larger
Class K giant star is, paradoxically, the dimmer of the two. When it cuts
between us and the smaller but brighter Class B star, to our eyes the system
dims. Weirder still, material is flowing off the surface of the K star into the
much younger B star.
These are fascinating astrofacts. But in some inevitable way, the data about
this extremity in the sky sink into my other mind and get a life of their own.
The B star is cannibalizing its elder.
Algol is best seen from Maine in fall. One October night of broken clouds
long ago, I spread the three legs of my small telescope and pointed it toward
Perseus. Through the black barrel Algol quaked and glinted. It's white, but
has a peculiar shadowiness. I watched it shift in the lens from fiery to a sort
of lurid dimness. Meanwhile cars rushed in the distance. An owl hooed. The
hair prickled on my neck.
This cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen, I thought. Then
something rustled, and a low-pitched, hollow whistling boiled out of the
trees, more horrible than anything I've heard before or since.
I froze. Suddenly I was so terrified my hands shook, and for a moment my
mind was split. A calm part of me was watching another, petrified part which
would have run for the road if it could have gotten my legs.
I stopped looking through the telescope. The whistle subsided. What animal
is that loud and terrible? What's dead in the thicket?
Reassembling my wits, I turned the telescope away from Algol and just
continued on, getting a breath of fresh light from galaxy M31. Then I packed
up and left.
All this must seem pretty foolish. A star is not a Gorgon. But fishing in the
dark for sanity, as I've done hundreds of times, my thoughts by some
combination of fact and fiction ended up in fear and trembling.
Apparently the ancient astronomers had some such experience too. Here in
the scientific age, somebody's got to make the sacrifice and say, Yeah, it still
happens. In central Maine, it might as well be me.

© Dana Wilde 2007

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All text in these pages Copyright 2007 Dana Wilde. Photos of Earth objects Copyright Dana Wilde and
Bonnie Woellner unless otherwise attributed.
Photos and graphics of outer space objects courtesy
of NASA unless otherwise attributed.
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