Aquarius pours water from a jar that never empties, and the stream runs down toward the Southern Fish. The picture is among the oldest in the sky. The Babylonians pictured the same stars as a great figure pouring water, and the Greeks and Romans kept the image.
Ganymede
For the Greeks, the water-bearer was often Ganymede, a handsome Trojan prince whom Zeus fell in love with. The god took the form of an eagle, carried him off to Olympus and made him cupbearer to the gods, the servant who poured their wine. The eagle is in the sky too, as the constellation Aquila, just next to Aquarius. Another story says the figure was Deucalion, who survived the great flood sent by Zeus.
The Age of Aquarius
The phrase "the dawning of the Age of Aquarius" from the 1967 musical Hair comes from astrology, which holds that each "age" of about 2,150 years is named for the sign in which the spring equinox lies. The equinox is now in Pisces. Astrologers disagree widely about when Aquarius begins, with proposed dates ranging from the 1900s to the 2600s. Astronomers, using the actual constellation boundaries, put it around the year 2600.
A sign of the future
In astrology Aquarius is ruled by Saturn, and since 1781 many modern astrologers also give it to Uranus, the planet found in that year.
How to find it
Aquarius is an autumn constellation. Start at the Great Square of Pegasus and drop south. A small Y-shaped group of stars called the Water Jar marks the bottom of the stream, and from there a line of faint stars runs south toward Fomalhaut, the bright star of the Southern Fish.
On the star chart
The 1824 plate shows a bearded man with a leafy crown, tipping a yellow urn. Its full title is "Aquarius, Piscis Australis and Ballon Aerostatique," and the yellow globe at the bottom is the hot-air balloon, a constellation invented in 1798 by Jerome Lalande to honor the Montgolfier brothers. It no longer appears on star maps.
Little-known facts
- In 2017 astronomers announced seven Earth-sized planets orbiting the star TRAPPIST-1 in Aquarius, about 40 light years away.
- The Helix Nebula, the "Eye of God," sits in Aquarius and is one of the closest planetary nebulae to Earth.
- The Aquarid meteor showers come from the debris of Halley's Comet.
- The figure pours water in a long stream that ends at the bright star Fomalhaut, in the Southern Fish.
- Aquarius has no very bright stars, and its brightest, Sadalsuud, means "luck of lucks" in Arabic.
Aquarius appears on our:
