A constellation representing the mythical bird that supposedly was reborn from
its own ashes. It is the largest of the 12 constellations invented at the end
of the 16th century by the Dutch navigators Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and
Frederick de Houtman. As with all the Keyser and de Houtman constellations it
was first depicted on a globe by Petrus Plancius in 1598 and first appeared in
print on the 1603 Uranometria atlas of Johann Bayer. The constellation lies near the southern end of the river
Eridanus, and its brightest star, Alpha Phoenicis, is of magnitude 2.4.
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Phoenix, the multi-coloured bird that ended its life on a funeral pyre, seen in the Uranographia of Johann Bode (1801).
The phoenix supposedly resembled a large eagle with scarlet, blue, purple, and
gold plumage. Ovid in his Metamorphoses tells us that the phoenix lived for 500 years, eating the gum of incense and
the sap of balsam. At the end of its allotted span the bird built itself a nest
from cinnamon bark and incense among the topmost branches of a palm tree,
ending its life on the fragrantly scented nest. A baby phoenix was born from
its father’s body. The nest was both the tomb of one phoenix and the cradle of the next.
When it was old enough to bear the weight, the young phoenix lifted the nest
from the tree and carried it to the temple of Hyperion, the Titan who was the
father of the Sun god. The death and rebirth of the phoenix has been seen as
symbolizing the daily rising and setting of the Sun.
Chinese associations
When the ancient Chinese constellations were formed 2,000 or more years ago, the
star we know as Alpha Phoenicis was the brightest member of a constellation
called Bakui, representing a net for catching birds. Bakui extended northwards into Sculptor, but as precession carried this part of the
sky beneath the horizon the constellation was moved farther north into Cetus.
© Ian Ridpath. All rights reserved
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