I don’t know about anyone else, but I
can’t think of the phrase “Cats in Space” without hearing the lead-in to the
old “Pigs in Space” skits from the Muppet Show.
But, no matter. Since we recently did a literary blog about
Cats in Science Fiction, it seems appropriate to do an astrophysics blog about Cats
in Space, or at least cat images and symbols in astronomy. There actually have been cats in space, which
we will get to later. But first, let’s
look at astronomical features named after cats, beginning with some
constellations.
Leo
This is one of the really great
constellations for urban star-gazers. It
has many bright stars and actually looks something like the thing that it is
named after – i.e. a lion. That would be
the Nemean Lion that Hercules slew, as one of his twelve labours. This cat took helpless maidens to his cave,
to lure warriors to their deaths, in their efforts to free the women. It was impervious to weaponry, so Hercules
killed it with his bare hands. Zeus then
put the lion in the sky to commemorate
the deed, so we can enjoy Leo to this day.
Or so the story goes.
From my part of the world, Leo is best
seen in the early spring evening sky, looking south, a little above the plane
of the ecliptic. Clearly that will vary
with latitude, though. It’s not too hard
to envision it as a lion, or at least some kind of animal, as the constellation
map shows.
It has many bright stars, notably
Regulus (think of it as the lion’s right foot)
and Denobela (the end of the tail).
There are also some nice double stars, that can be split in smaller
telescopes. Gamma Leonis is a favorite
of amateur astronomers. It also contains
the small M-Class star, Wolf 359, famous in Star Trek history for the location
of a decisive battle with the Borg.
Leo also has several notable deep sky
objects, especially the galaxies M65, M66, M105 and M96 (those are known as
Messier numbers). Though they are quite
bright deep sky objects, I haven’t had a lot of luck finding them from my city
back yard. But they are pretty easy in a
reasonably dark sky.
The meteor shower known as the Leonids
occurs in November, and appears to come from that part of the sky. That shower can be pretty remarkable. I recall seeing some amazing meteors in the
early 2000s, including some that broke up in the atmosphere with a spectacular
fireball effect.
Note that since Leo is near the plane
of the ecliptic, the planets sometimes pass through it, which can be useful for
orienting observations.
Leo (Minor)
This one’s kind of a dud really. It is quite small, and its stars are all
rather faint. Even in a dark sky, it’s
pretty tough to make it out (it’s above Leo, if you can recognize it). It has some interesting galaxies, but you
need a dark sky and a good telescope to make them out. There is no interesting mythology associated
with Leo Minor, as it wasn’t designated until the late 1600s.
Lynx
This is another very faint
constellation in the northern sky, without much to note about it. Supposedly, it was designated Lynx because
you need the eyesight of a cat to see it.
It does have an interesting globular cluster (NGC 2419), which is high
above the galactic plane. It is supposed
to be findable in a reasonably dark sky with a medium sized telescope.
Cat’s Eye Nebula
This is a classic planetary nebular,
and a very beautiful one, as you can see from the Hubble photo. The term planetary is a misnomer, given early
in the history of telescope observations, as they look something like planets
through a small telescope.
It is located in the constellation Draco, high in the northern sky. In fact, it is very close to the north ecliptic pole, similar to how Polaris is close to the North Equatorial Pole. In other words, it is 90 degrees above the sun’s position.
The concentric rings are actually
bubbles of dust, produced by a central star that has ejected some of its
matter, late in its life. The colours
depend on the type of matter that is in each ring and some of the other
structural features are probably related to magnetic fields.
The sun might look something like this in
several billion years, as stars in that mass range are thought to go through
this stage.
The important thing here, is that it
does look rather like a cat’s eye.
Cat’s Paw Nebula
This is another spectacular nebula, in
Scorpio. It is obvious why it is called
the Cat’s Paw from the picture. In this
case, the nebula is an emission nebula, similar to the Orion nebula. Rather than being an artifact of a star near
the end of its life, it is in fact the birthplace of new stars. In fact, it is an extremely prolific
birthplace, and may well be said to be having kittens. 
Mars (face, cat, mouse)
A fair bit of cat lore has accreted
around the planet Mars since the space age began, and we started sending probes
there. Perhaps the most famous of these
is the so-called Face on Mars, in the Cydonia region. Many observers have claimed that it has a
leonine (lion-like) appearance. Several
books have been written on the subject, claiming that it is not a natural
object. There have also been proposals
that it has a link to the Sphinx, in Egypt, which also has a lion-like
appearance (a hybrid lion body and human head).
Those who wish to read more about
this might start with the wiki page:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_correlation_theory
Also worth noting is the so-called cat
on Mars, though I don’t believe any books have been written about it. It falls into that category we looked at
earlier (pareidolia), whereby humans have a tendency to see familiar figures in
random configurations of shapes.
And since a Martian Cat obviously needs
a food source, here’s another picture that someone discovered in the Curiosity
rover’s archives. Yes, it looks
amazingly like a Mars Mouse.
Fellicite the astro-cat
Finally, there is the story of the cats
who actually did go into space. I didn’t
know about this until recently, but apparently the French launched a couple of
cats into space in the 1960s. From a
NASA site:
On October 18,
1963, French scientists launched the first cat into space on a Veronique AGI
sounding rocket No. 47. The cat, named Félicette, was successfully retrieved
after a parachute descent, but a second feline flight on October 24 ran into
difficulties that prevented recovery.
http://history.nasa.gov/animals.html
So there you have it – a comprehensive
list of cat related lore concerning the sciences of astrophysics, astronomy and
astronautics.
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