Virgo is the second-largest constellation in the sky, after Hydra, and the only major zodiac sign that is a woman. She lies across the sky holding an ear of wheat, and the name of that ear, Spica, is one of the most important stars in the history of astronomy.
Who is the maiden?
The Greeks gave several answers. One is Astraea, the goddess of justice and innocence, who was the last immortal to live among humans during the Golden Age. As people grew more violent through the Silver, Bronze and Iron Ages, she finally fled to the heavens, and her scales became the neighboring constellation Libra. Another answer is Demeter, the grain goddess, or her daughter Persephone, who returns from the underworld every spring. The wheat in her hand points to the harvest, and the sun was in Virgo in late summer, when the wheat was gathered.
The ear of wheat
Spica, a brilliant blue-white star, is the brightest star in Virgo, and its name is Latin for "ear of grain." Around 129 BCE the Greek astronomer Hipparchus compared his own measurements of Spica with those made about 150 years earlier by Timocharis. The star's position relative to the autumn equinox had shifted. Hipparchus concluded that the equinox itself was slowly moving along the ecliptic, and he discovered what we now call the precession of the equinoxes.
A sign of sorting and service
In astrology Virgo is ruled by Mercury and associated with care, craft and analysis, the work of sorting wheat from chaff.
How to find it
Virgo is a spring and early-summer constellation. Follow the curve of the Big Dipper's handle to orange Arcturus, then "speed on to Spica," a bright blue-white star about as far again to the south. The rest of the maiden's Y-shaped figure spreads out from there, mostly faint.
On the star chart
On Sidney Hall's chart Virgo is drawn as a winged woman in a pink bodice and a green skirt, holding a spray of wheat. The constellation has been drawn with wings since antiquity, which makes the figure look like an angel.
Little-known facts
- Spica is really a close pair of massive stars that orbit each other every four days, tugging each other into egg shapes.
- The Virgo Cluster, a group of about 1,300 galaxies, is the nearest large galaxy cluster to the Milky Way.
- In 2019 the first photograph of a black hole showed one at the heart of M87, the giant galaxy in the Virgo Cluster.
- The Mesopotamian name for the same stars was the Furrow, a freshly plowed field.
Virgo appears on our:
