Cancer (constellation)

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Cancer (constellation)

Cancer is one of the twelve constellation

Constellation

A constellation is a group of stars that appear to have a physical proximity in the sky. The stars in a constellation are often vastly distant from each other, but they appear close to each other from the perspective of Earth....
s of the zodiac

Zodiac

Zodiac denotes an annual cycle of twelve stations along the ecliptic, the apparent path of the Sun across the heavens through the constellations that divide the ecliptic into twelve equal zones of celestial longitude....
. Its name is Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
for crab

Crab

Crabs are Decapoda crustaceans of the infraorder Brachyura, which typically have a very short projecting "tail" , or where the reduced abdomen is entirely hidden under the thorax....
and it is commonly represented as such. Its symbol is . Cancer is small and its stars are faint. It lies between Gemini

Gemini (constellation)

Gemini is one of the constellations of the zodiac. Its name is Latin for "twins", and it is associated with the twins Castor and Pollux in Greek mythology....
to the west and Leo

Leo (constellation)

Leo is one of the constellations of the zodiac. Its name is Latin for lion. Its symbol is , a corruption of the initial letter of ?e?? . Leo lies between dim Cancer to the west and Virgo to the east....
to the east, Lynx

Lynx (constellation)

Lynx is a constellation in the northern hemisphere's sky, introduced in the 17th century by Johannes Hevelius. It is named after the lynx, a genus of cat....
to the north and Canis Minor

Canis Minor

Canis Minor is a small constellation. It was included in the 1st century astronomer Ptolemy's 48 constellations, and is still included among the 88 modern constellations....
and Hydra

Hydra (constellation)

Hydra is the largest of the 88 modern constellations, measuring 1303 square degrees. It has a long history, having been included among the 48 constellations listed by the 1st century astronomer Ptolemy....
to the south.

lass="link1" onMouseover='showByLink("m430571",this)' onMouseout='hide("m430571")'href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/55_Cancri">55 Cancri

55 Cancri

55 Cancri , also cataloged Rho1 Cancri or abbreviated 55 Cnc, is a binary star approximately 41 light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Cancer ....
is a quintruple planet system with four gas giant

Gas giant

A gas giant is a large planet that is not primarily composed of Rock or other solid matter. There are four gas giants in our Solar System: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune....
s and one terrestrial planet

Terrestrial planet

A terrestrial planet, telluric planet, rocky planet or inner planet is a planet that is primarily composed of silicate Rock s....
.

er is the best noted among stargazers as the home of Praesepe

Beehive Cluster

The Beehive Cluster is an open cluster in theconstellation Cancer . It is one of the nearest open clusters to the Solar System, and it contains a larger star population than most other nearby clusters....
(Messier 44), an open cluster

Open cluster

An open cluster is a star cluster of up to a few thousand stars that were formed from the same giant molecular cloud, and are still loosely gravity to each other....
also called the Beehive Cluster or the Gate of Men, which contains the star e Cancri

Epsilon Cancri

Epsilon Cancri is a star in the constellation Cancer . e Cancri is one of the brighter members of the Beehive Cluster, and the Bayer designation e Cancri originally referred to the entire cluster....
.

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Encyclopedia

Cancer is one of the twelve constellation

Constellation

Zodiac

Latin

Crab

. Cancer is small and its stars are faint. It lies between Gemini

Gemini (constellation)

Gemini is one of the constellations of the zodiac. Its name is Latin for "twins", and it is associated with the twins Castor and Pollux in Greek mythology....
to the west and Leo

Leo (constellation)

Lynx (constellation)

Lynx is a constellation in the northern hemisphere's sky, introduced in the 17th century by Johannes Hevelius. It is named after the lynx, a genus of cat....
to the north and Canis Minor

Canis Minor

Canis Minor is a small constellation. It was included in the 1st century astronomer Ptolemy's 48 constellations, and is still included among the 88 modern constellations....
and Hydra

Hydra (constellation)

Notable features

Planetary system

55 Cancri

Gas giant

Terrestrial planet

A terrestrial planet, telluric planet, rocky planet or inner planet is a planet that is primarily composed of silicate Rock s....
.

Deep sky objects

Cancer is the best noted among stargazers as the home of Praesepe

Beehive Cluster

Open cluster

Epsilon Cancri

Messier 67

Messier objects 67 is an open cluster, or galactic cluster, in the constellation Cancer . M67's Trumpler class is variously given as II 2 r, II 2 m, or II 3 r....
can also be found here.

Named Stars

Bayer Bayer designation A Bayer designation is a stellar designation in which a specific star is identified by a Greek alphabet, followed by the genitive case form of its parent constellation's Latin language name....	Name	Origin	Meaning
a A The letter A is the first letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is a ; the plural is aes or, more commonly, a's....	Acubens	Arabic	the claws
ß ß The letter ? is a letter in the German alphabet. Its German language name is Eszett or scharfes S , and is pronounced as an unvoiced s ....	Al Tarf	Arabic	the end
? ? or is a letter derived from the Latin alphabet. Both glyphs of the majuscule and Lower case forms of this letter are based on the rotated form of a minuscule e; a similar letter with identical minuscule is used in the Pan-Nigerian Alphabet, but has the capital form majuscule , based on a horizontally flipped majuscule E....	Asellus Borealis	Latin Latin Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....	northern donkey
d D D is the fourth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is spelled dee , plural dees....	Asellus Australis	Latin	southern donkey
e E E is the fifth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is spelled e , plural ees . The letter E is the most commonly used letter in the Czech language, Danish language, Dutch language, English language, French language, German language, Hungarian language, Latin language, Norwegian language, Spanish language... , M44	Praesepe(or the beehive cluster	Latin	manger
? ? or is a letter derived from the Latin alphabet. Both glyphs of the majuscule and Lower case forms of this letter are based on the rotated form of a minuscule e; a similar letter with identical minuscule is used in the Pan-Nigerian Alphabet, but has the capital form majuscule , based on a horizontally flipped majuscule E....	Tegmine	Greek Greek language Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....	skin
? ? or is a letter derived from the Latin alphabet. Both glyphs of the majuscule and Lower case forms of this letter are based on the rotated form of a minuscule e; a similar letter with identical minuscule is used in the Pan-Nigerian Alphabet, but has the capital form majuscule , based on a horizontally flipped majuscule E....	Kwan Kei	Chinese Chinese language Chinese or the Sinitic language is a language family consisting of language mutually unintelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan languages of languages....	bright fire
? ? or is a letter derived from the Latin alphabet. Both glyphs of the majuscule and Lower case forms of this letter are based on the rotated form of a minuscule e; a similar letter with identical minuscule is used in the Pan-Nigerian Alphabet, but has the capital form majuscule , based on a horizontally flipped majuscule E....	Nahn	Persian Persian language name=Persian\|nativename=\|pronunciation=[f??r'si]\|image=\|caption=Farsi in Perso-Arabic script \|states= Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Bahrain....	nose

Names

In Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece

The term Ancient Greece refers to the period of History of Greece lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman Republic conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth ....
, Aratus

Aratus

Aratus was a Greeks didactic poet, known for his technical poetry....
called the constellation ?a?????? (Karkinos), which was followed by Hipparchus

Hipparchus

Hipparchus, the common Latinization of the Greek Hipparkhos, can mean:* Hipparchus, the ancient Greek astronomer** Hipparchic cycle, an astronomical cycle he created...
and Ptolemy

Ptolemy

Claudius Ptolemaeus , known in English as Ptolemy , was a Roman Greek mathematics, Greek astronomy, geographer and astrologer. He lived in History of Roman Egypt, and was probably born there in a town in the Thebaid called Ptolemais Hermiou; he died in Alexandria around 168 AD....
. The Alfonsine tables

Alfonsine tables

The Alfonsine tables were ephemeris drawn up at Toledo, Spain by order of Alfonso X around 1252 to 1270 to correct anomalies in the Tables of Toledo....
called it Carcinus, a Latinized form of the Greek word. Eratosthenes

Eratosthenes

Eratosthenes of Cyrene was a Greeks mathematician, poet, sportsperson, geographer and astronomer. He made several discoveries and inventions including a system of latitude and longitude....
extended this as ?a??????, ????, ?a? Fat??: the Crab, Asses, and Crib.

The Indian language Sanskrit

Sanskrit

Sanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India....
shares a common ancestor with Greek, and the Sanskrit name of Cancer is Karka and Karkata. In Telugu

Telugu language

Telugu or Telegu is one of the four classical languages of India. It is a South-Central Dravidian languages mostly spoken in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, where it is the official language....
it is "Karkatakam", in Kannada

Kannada language

Kannada is one of the major Dravidian languages of India, spoken predominantly in the state of Karnataka. Kannada, whose native speakers are called Kannadigas , number roughly 35 million, making it the 27th most spoken language in the world....
"Karkataka" or "Kataka", in Tamil

Tamil language

Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has Official language in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore....
Karkatan, and in Sinhalese Kagthaca. The later Hindus knew it as Kulira, from the Greek ???????? (Koloyros), the term originated by Proclus

Proclus

Proclus Lycaeus , called "The Successor" or "Diadochos" , was a Greek philosophy Neoplatonist philosophy, one of the last major Classical philosophers ....
.

In Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC....
, Manilius

Marcus Manilius

Marcus Manilius was a Roman poet, astrologer, and author of a poem in five books called Astronomica....
and Ovid

Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso was a Roman Empire poet known as Ovid to the English language-speaking world, who wrote about love, seduction, and Roman mythology transformation....
called the constellation Litoreus (shore-inhabiting). Astacus and Cammarus appear in various classic writers, while it is called Nepa in Cicero

Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Ancient Rome philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Constitution of the Roman Republic. Cicero is widely considered one of Rome's greatest rhetoric and prose stylists....
's De Finibus and the works of Columella

Columella

Lucius Iunius Moderatus Columella was a Roman Empire writer. After a career in the army , he took up farming. His De Re Rustica in twelve volumes has been completely preserved and forms our most important source on Roman agriculture, together with the works of Cato the Elder and Marcus Terentius Varro, both of which he occasionally cit...
, Plautus

Plautus

Titus Maccius Plautus , commonly known as Plautus, was a Ancient Rome playwright. His comedy are among the earliest surviving intact works in Latin literature....
, and Varro

Varro

Varro was a Ancient Rome cognomen carried by:*Gaius Terentius Varro, the consul defeated at the battle of Cannae*Marcus Terentius Varro , the scholar...
; all of these words signify crab, lobster

Lobster

Clawed lobsters compose a family of large marine crustaceans. Lobsters are economically important as seafood, forming the basis of a global industry that nets United States dollar1.8 billion in trade annually....
, or scorpion

Scorpion

Scorpions are any arachnid of the order Scorpionida. They are members of the order Scorpiones within the class Arachnida. There are about 2,000 species of scorpions, found widely distributed south of about Latitude, except New Zealand and Antarctica....
.

Athanasius Kircher

Athanasius Kircher

Athanasius Kircher was a 17th century Germany Society of Jesus scholar who published around 40 works, most notably in the fields of Orientalism, geology, and medicine....
said that in Coptic Egypt it was ??a??a, the Bestia seu Statio Typhonis (the Power of Darkness). Jérôme Lalande

Jérôme Lalande

Joseph J?r?me Lefran?ais de Lalande was a France astronomer and writer....
identified this with Anubis

Anubis

Anubis is the Greek language name for a jackal-headed deity associated with mummy and the afterlife in Egyptian mythology. In the ancient Egyptian language, Anubis is known as Inpu, ....
, one of the Egyptian divinities commonly associated with Sirius

Sirius

Sirius is the list of brightest stars in the night sky with a visual apparent magnitude of −1.46, almost twice as bright as Canopus, the next brightest star....
.

Representations

The modern symbol for Cancer represents the pincers of a crab

Crab

Crabs are Decapoda crustaceans of the infraorder Brachyura, which typically have a very short projecting "tail" , or where the reduced abdomen is entirely hidden under the thorax....
, but Cancer has been represented with various types of creatures, usually those living in the water, and always those with an exoskeleton

Exoskeleton

An exoskeleton is an external skeleton that supports and protects an animal's body, in contrast to the internal endoskeleton of, for example, a human skeleton....
, decapods

Decapoda

The decapods or Decapoda are an order of crustaceans within the class Malacostraca, including many familiar groups, such as crayfish, crabs, lobsters, prawns and shrimp....
in particular.

In the Egyptian records of about 2000 BC it was described as Scarabaeus (Scarab

Scarab

Scarab beetle may refer to: *A beetle of the family Scarabaeidae*A dung beetle, especially the Scarabaeus sacer worshipped by the ancient Egyptians as an embodiment of the god Khepri ...
), the sacred emblem

Emblem

An emblem is a pictorial , abstract art or representational, that epitomizes a concept ? e.g., a moral truth, or an allegory ? or that represents a person, such as a Monarch or Saint symbology....
of immortality, although Peter Jensen claimed this sign had been a tortoise

Tortoise

Tortoises or land turtles are land-dwelling reptiles of the family of Testudinidae, order Turtle. Like their marine cousins, the sea turtles, tortoises are shielded from predators by a shell....
in Babylonia

Babylonia

Babylonia was a state in Lower Mesopotamia , Babylon as its franklin. Babylonia emerged when Hammurabi created an empire out of the territories of the former kingdoms of Sumer and Akkad....
, and that it was so figured there and in Egypt 4000 BC. In the 12th century, an illustrated astronomical manuscript shows it as a water beetle

Water beetle

A water beetle is a beetle adapted to living in water. several different types are known, most in or on fresh water. The rest Marine species tend to live in the intertidal zone....
. Albumasar writes of this sign in the work published in 1489 as a large crayfish

Crayfish

Crayfish, crawfish, or crawdads are fresh water crustaceans resembling small lobsters, to which they are related. They breathe through feather-like gills and are found in bodies of water that do not freeze to the bottom; they are also mostly found in brooks and streams where there is fresh water running, and which have shelter ag...
. Jakob Bartsch

Jakob Bartsch

Jakob Bartsch or Jacobus Bartschius was a Germany astronomer....
and Stanislaus Lubienitzki, in the 17th century, described it as a lobster

Lobster

Mythology

Cancer the crab, plays a minor role in the Twelve Labors of Hercules. While Hercules was busy fighting the multi-headed monster, Hydra, the goddess Hera

Hera

In the Twelve Olympians of classical Greek Mythology, Hera or Here was the wife and older sister of Zeus. Her chief function was as goddess of women and marriage....
, who did not like Hercules, sent the Crab to distract him. Cancer grabbed onto the hero's toe with its claws, but barely breaking the rhythm of his great battle with Hydra, Hercules crushed the crab with his foot. Hera, grateful for the little crustacean's heroic but pitiful effort, gave it a place in the sky.

Cancer is said to have been the place for the Akkad

Akkad

The Akkadian Empire was an empire centered in the city of Akkad Sumerian language: Agade KUR A.GA.D?KI "land of Akkad". ; Biblical Accad) and its surrounding region Akkadian URU Akkad KI in central Mesopotamia....
ian Sun of the South, perhaps from its position at the winter solstice

Solstice

A solstice is an astronomical event that occurs twice each year, when the tilt of the Earth's Rotation is most inclined toward or away from the Sun, causing the Sun's apparent position in the sky to reach its north or south extreme....
in very remote antiquity. But afterwards it was associated with the fourth month Duzu (June-July in the modern western calendar), and was known as the Northern Gate of Sun.

Showing but few stars, and its brightest stars being of only 4th magnitude

Apparent magnitude

The apparent magnitude of a celestial body is a measurement of its brightness as seen by an observer on Earth, normalized to the value it would have in the absence of the Earth's atmosphere....
, Cancer was often considered the "Dark Sign", quaintly described as black and without eyes. Dante

Dante Alighieri

Durante degli Alighieri , commonly known as Dante Alighieri, was a Florence poet of the Middle Ages. His Magnum opus, the Divine Comedy , is often considered the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of world literature....
, alluding to this faintness and position of heavens, wrote in Paradiso
The Divine Comedy

The Divine Comedy , written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321, is widely considered the central epic poem of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature....
:

Then a light among them brightened, So that, if Cancer one such crystal had, Winter would have a month of one sole day.

Astrology

, the Sun appears in the constellation Cancer from July 21 to August 9. In tropical astrology

Tropical Astrology

Tropical astrology is a type of astrology based on a zodiac whose points of reference are the tropics. The word tropic comes from the Greek for "turning point," and originally meant the point at which the sun at sunrise and sunset appears to turn, and to move north in the northern hemisphere and south in the southern hemisphere along the...
, the Sun is considered to be in the sign Cancer

Cancer (astrology)

Cancer is the fourth astrological sign in the Zodiac, originating from the Cancer . In western astrology, this sign is no longer aligned with the constellation as a result of the Precession ....
from June 24 to July 23, and in sidereal astrology

Sidereal astrology

Sidereal astrology is the system of astrology used by some Western and all Jyotish astrology who base their interpretation around the use of the Sidereal time zodiac....
, from July 16 to August 15.

Cancer (constellation)

Notable features

Planetary system

Deep sky objects

Named Stars

Names

Representations

Mythology

Astrology

External links