[image: 70082c37b7354f001c503b84facd9b7d.jpg]
*Daedalus:* the master craftsman
During one of our first celestial excursions (April 13th), we encountered
Daedalus and his ill-fated son Icarus, the latter of whom perished after
having flown too close to the Sun upon waxen wings.      This tragic tale,
one of the mythological Universe's best known, was but one event in
Daedalus' storied and sometimes sordid career.     Today, we revisit
Daedalus and learn much more about his long life, impressive works and
questionable character.  Born the son of Eupalamus, an obscure figure known
only for having been Daedalus' father, Daedalus was a bona fide child
prodigy in both art and craftsmanship.    It was said that even before
reaching his teens, Daedalus was already "drawing from life," and had
exhibited stunning ingenuity in his  many inventions.       Such was
Daedalus' reputation that when he was still a young man, his sister Perdix
asked him to take on her son, Calos, as an apprentice. Although Daedalus
gladly agreed to do so, he soon learned that Calos' skills were comparable,
perhaps even superior, to his own.   For instance, one day as Daedalus and
Calos were walking along a beach, the latter found a fish's spine on a
rock.     He took it home and reproduced its design in iron, thereby making
a saw.     By that time, Calos had already invented the geometrical compass
and a potter's wheel.      Realizing that his nephew would likely develop
even more formidable skills that he could ever possess, Daedalus persuaded
Calos to join him on a stroll along the top of a cliff outside of Athens.
  Once there, Daedalus pushed him off the edge.  He would certainly have
died had it not been for Athena.    The goddess so adored Calos for his
ingenuity that she transformed him into a partridge  as he fell.     For
this reason one never sees a partridge flying at a high altitude for Calos
forever after harbored a morbid fear of heights.     Many Athenians
witnessed Daedalus' act and he was promptly arrested,   He was tried and
convicted of murder, even though Calos didn't die, but was only
transformed.   Having taken into account the benefits Athenians derived
from his many inventions, Daedalus was merely banished instead of being
executed.      He fled to Crete and entered the service of King Minos who
soon found his services to be invaluable. Daedalus repaired much of the
Cretan infrastructure, which had largely fallen into disrepair.    He lived
happily and comfortably in Crete for many years.  During this time, he
sired two sons, Icarus and Iapyx, on Cretian slave women. He raised both
his sons to become his apprentices.   Fortunately for them both, neither
matched their father's abilities.     Daedalus' life became considerably
more interesting when Pasiphae, the King's wife, approached him one evening
in desperation.    She begged him to make her a cow suit as quickly as he
could.  Though perplexed by both the request and her strange earnestness,
Daedalus constructed the suit at once, much to the queen's delight.    What
Daedalus didn't know was that Pasiphae had developed a mad lust for a
beautiful white bull in her husband's possession.     Poseidon had
presented the bull to King Minos with the expectation that the king would
sacrifice it back to the god.   Instead, Minos became so enamoured of the
bull that he decided to keep it for himself.      The enraged Posiedon,
being more creative in his revenge schemes that his thunderbolt-happy
brother Zeus, punished Minos by casting a spell on his wife that caused her
to ardently desire the bull.   Hence, the necessity of the cow suit which
she used to indulge her unnatural lust.    From this coupling was born the
dreaded Minotaur, a monstrous creature with a human underbody attached to a
bull's head and torso.    Horror struck at the grotesque baby's appearance,
Minos ordered Daedalus to construct special housing for the creature to
prevent its escape.    Daedalus designed and built the famous labyrinth.
 So intricate were its twists and turns that nobody could escape from it,
unless they knew the secret.

[image: 35cafa6717568e0f19db3450ad14a750.jpg]

The Minotaur remained imprisoned in this complex maze.     On Minos'
orders, servants would push in a sheep, goat or other animal each day to
satiate the creature.   Once a year, however, the Minotaur dined on
Athenian youth.    Crete and Athens had once been at war and Crete
prevailed.  In order to maintain the truce that ended their conflict, Crete
required Athens to send them fourteen young people (seven boys and seven
girls) once a year.  These tributes, as they were called, were herded into
the labyrinth, never to be seen again.    One year, Theseus, the son of
Athenian king Aegeus, volunteered to become one of the tributes, for he was
determined to become as great a hero as his cousin Heracles.      When
Theseus and the other Athenian youth arrived at Crete, Ariadne, Minos'
daughter, fell instantly in love with him.   She went hastily to Daedalus
and asked him to tell her the secret on how to escape from the labyrinth.
   Daedalus told her that the only way to leave the labyrinth was to tie a
skein of thread at its opening.  A person would need to draw the thread
along with him/her while moving through the maze.     Only by following the
thread back toward the entrance would the person manage to leave the
labyrinth.    Daedalus gave Ariadne a skein of thread before she left.  She
ran down to the shore where the tributes were about to enter the
labyrinth.  Ariadne rushed up to Theseus and said, "If you take me with
you, I will tell you how to escape the labyrinth."   Theseus agreed.
 Ariadne told him the secret and handed him the thread.    Theseus entered
the labyrinth, slew the Minotaur, worked his way out of the labyrinth with
the other tributes and then left Crete in the company of Ariadne.  (He
abandoned her the next morning on the island of Naxos.)    Realizing that
the tributes could only have escaped the labyrinth with Daedalus'
assistance, Minos had him locked in the labyrinth with his son Icarus.
 (Iapyx had already matured into adulthood and was living elsewhere.)    As
we learned in April, Daedalus fashioned wings out of birds' feathers and
wax for both him and his son.     Before they flew out of the labyrinth,
Daedalus advised Icarus not to fly too close to the Sun.     Unfortunately,
Icarus didn't heed his advice. When he ventured too close to the Sun, the
wax melted and the wings fell apart.   Icarus fell to his death in the
sea.    Daedalus retrieved his son's body and buried him on the Icarian
island, named for his ill-fated son. During the funeral ceremony, Daedalus
was shocked to observe a partridge laughing at him in his profound state of
grief.    Then, in exile yet again, Daedalus moved to Sicily and entered
the court of Cocalus, king of Camicus.      Daedalus initially maintained a
low profile for he rightly feared Minos.     When he learned of Daedalus'
escape, Minos resolved to find him no matter where he hid.     The King
then traveled to each kingdom and presented each ruler with a challenge.
"I shall present a large sack of gold to anyone who can thread a
seashell."      For a while, no king took up the challenge for each of them
believed the task to have been impossible.    However, when arriving in
Sicily, Minos met Cocalus and announced the challenge.  Cocalus asked Minos
to give him a day to work out the problem.    Cocalus presented a seashell
to Daedalus and asked him if he could thread it within one day.
 Daedalus immediately devised a solution.  He sawed off the shell's apex
and then tied a string to an ant.  He then closed the apex until the ant
progressed to the other opening.   The seashell was threaded.     Cocalus
brought the threaded shell to Minos and explained how he managed to solve
the problem.  Minos knew at once that only Daedalus would have been clever
enough to have figured out how to thread the shell.      Minos told Cocalus
that he knew that he harbored the fugitive named Daedalus. He also demanded
that Cocalus hand him over within one day or his kingdom would be
destroyed.   Cocalus went promptly to Daedalus to explain the situation.
 Daedalus remained quite calm.  "Invite him to dinner tonight," the
craftsman suggested.        Cocalus extended the invitation, which Minos
readily accepted, for he expected to receive Daedalus during the dinner.
Soon after Minos arrived at the king's court, he was told that dinner
would, most unfortunately, be delayed.    Minos was invited to bathe while
awaiting dinner.    Minos proceeded to the baths.  As soon as he entered
the tub, Cocalus' daughters maneuvered a pipe over him.    At once, boiling
water flowed through the pipe and onto the King, who perished in  agony
while the boiling water flowed over him.   No longer in danger, Daedalus
lived openly in Coalcus' court.     By then he had become an old man whose
innovations were few and far between.   Despite his arrests, two exiles,
the guilt of having murdered his nephew and the grief of having lost a son,
in the end Daedalus lived and then died peacefully.

THE SOUTHWORTH PLANETARIUM
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2020-2021:  XVII

THE DAILY ASTRONOMER
Thursday, September 24, 2020
Remote Planetarium 95:  Local Group Questions

Thank you! Thank you, subscribers for continuing to send excellent
questions.  One indictment of science is that every answer it produces
prompts twenty other questions.     Of course, scientific knowledge
progresses because of the questions each new discovery generates.      We
are pleased to have so many questions, as well, so we can cover topics that
were previously neglected.

*"In that schematic of the local group, surely all the members do not lie
on the same plane? Also, are the sizes of the spirals to the same scale as
the distance?"  -C.H.*

[image: Local_Group.svg.png]

You are correct.  The galaxies are not located in the same plane.
The vertical lines connect the galaxies, themselves, to the reflected
positions along the plane, defined by the Milky Way Galaxy's position.
Notice that the galaxy name labels are next to the galaxies, themselves.

The map is not intended to be a scale model by size.

*Does the Local Group of Galaxies have a "shape," or is it just a lot of
galaxies scattered about?  -S.H.*

Although the Local Group looks like galaxies floating in the void, the
structure is actually dumb-bell shaped.      At one end of the dumb bell
one has the Milky Way Galaxy and at the other end the Andromeda Galaxy.
  Various satellite galaxies surround both these major galaxies.
 Other outlier galaxies are toward the "edge" of this Local Group.      The
membership of some of these outer galaxies isn't certain.


*Is the Milky Way Galaxy ripping the Magellanic Clouds apart just like it
is with the dwarf galaxies?   -P.C.*
As far as astronomers can determine, yes it is.     We still don't know if
the "clouds" have already passed through the galactic plane.  However, we
do know that the LMC and SMC will eventually torn asunder by the Milky Way
Galaxy's tidal forces.     The distance of both of these irregular galaxies
from the Milky Way is about equal to the galaxy's diameter.
Consequently, both of them are doomed....albeit in the very distant
future.


*Is the Local Group part of a bigger structure or is that as big as it
gets?    -K.S.*
One would think that the Local Group of Galaxies would be big enough!  Many
more much larger structures exist.  The Local Group of Galaxies is part of
the Virgo Cluster.   (We'll be proceeding to that level soon.)      The
image below shows the Local Group and other groups comprising this
cluster.

[image: 400px-Local_supercluster-ly.jpg]



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