Hercules constellation
Latin Hercules, genitive Herculis, abbreviation Her
North up, east to the left, as you see the sky. The lines are a common figure; the stars are from the catalogue.
The myth
Heracles, strongest of the Greek heroes, kneeling upside down in the sky, one foot on the dragon's head. His body is a quadrilateral, the Keystone. On one side lies M13, one of the finest globular clusters of the northern sky: on a dark night a tiny smudge of hundreds of thousands of suns.
When can Hercules be seen?
It stands highest around 10 pm in July. It can be seen from everywhere north of 47°S, and it never sets north of 76°N.
The brightest stars
| Star | Designation | Magnitude | Colour |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kornephoros | β Her | 2.77 | yellow |
| Rutilicus | ζ Her | 2.81 | yellow |
| Sarin | δ Her | 3.14 | white |
| – | π Her | 3.16 | reddish |
| – | μ Her | 3.42 | yellow |
| Rasalgethi | α1 Her | 3.48 | reddish |
| – | η Her | 3.53 | yellow |
| – | ξ Her | 3.70 | yellow |
The smaller the number, the brighter: below 1 are the brightest stars of the sky, 4 is hard to see under a city sky. Greek letters after Johann Bayer (1603).