THE STRANGE MYSTERY WHICH ENVELOPED TWO DAUPHIN STARS

The Dauphin is a small and faint constellation of the northern hemisphere, recognizable between the constellations of Aquila, Aquarius and Pegasus. Although none of the stars in this constellation is brighter than the third/fourth magnitude, under a dark sky the Dolphin jumps to the eye almost immediately because of the reduced distance separating its stars and its rhombus shape.

Despite their low luminosity, the two brightest stars of the constellation, Sualocin and Rotanev, attracted the attention of several scholars for some time, but not for some physical properties, but for their names.

Usually the stars have names of Latin, Greek or Arabic etymology, but Sualocin and Rotanev did not seem to derive from any known language.

In the early decades of the 1800s these two names were commonly used within star catalogs, though no one knew where they came from. A British astronomer, Thomas Webb, tried to clarify their origin with a real detective's work. Going back through the various catalogues Webb discovered that the two names appeared for the first time in a catalogue compiled by Giuseppe Piazzi (the discoverer of Ceres, the first asteroid), then director of the Palermo Observatory, in 1814.

But that didn’t explain why Piazzi called these two stars that way. Then suddenly Webb realized something really bizarre: reading the names backwards these become Nicolaus and Venator, which translated into Italian from Latin mean Niccolò Cacciatore. Webb solved the mystery: Cacciatore had in fact been Piazzi’s assistant in compiling the star catalogue, succeeding him in leading the observatory.

Piazzi in the catalogue compilation had wanted to pay homage to his help, always printing his name in the sky.

Credit: Pete Lawrence