The sky is divided into 88 constellations. They’re named for animals, places, characters from mythology, and even scientific instruments. But only one is named for a real person. Coma Berenices represents the hair of Queen Berenice II of Egypt. She reigned more than 2200 years ago.

Her husband was King Ptolemy III. When he headed off to war, she pledged to sacrifice her beautiful hair to the gods if he returned safely. He did, so she placed her hair inside a temple. It vanished.

A court astronomer told the king that her locks had been placed in the stars, in a sparkly group near the tail of the lion. So the region became known as Berenice’s Hair, although it wasn’t depicted as a constellation until the 1500s. When astronomers drew up a formal list of constellations, in the 1900s, Coma made the cut.

Most of the visible stars there really are related. They belong to the Coma Star Cluster. It’s a group of dozens of stars, centered about 280 light-years away. The stars are all about 450 million years old – just one-tenth the age of the Sun.

Coma Berenices is low in the east in early evening. Its stars are faint, so you need a dark sky to see them – moonlight or city lights overpower the beautiful tresses of Queen Berenice.

Among astronomers, Coma is best known for its many galaxies, and we’ll talk about one of them tomorrow.

Script by Damond Benningfield