Second Frog

I've grown accustomed lately to sitting out in the middle of my back yard around midnight and looking out at the sky.  Because there is a lot of overhead tree growth facing the west, my direction tends to be toward the east, particularly the southeast.  And this time of the year at my latitude, the southeastern night sky isn't very much to behold.  As a matter of fact, under the city lights I have to endure with my star-gazing, there is only one isolated star out in that part of the sky to view: Deneb Kaitos, or Beta Ceti, the brightest star in the constellation Cetus...

In Greek mythology, Cetus represents the whale, or sea-monster...I don't suppose the ancients made much of a distinction between the two...that was attacking the fair Andromeda when the hero Perseus, flying in on the winged horse Pegasus, rescued her...while Queen Cassiopeia, Andromeda's mother, looked on with fear.  All five of these characters are constellations in the autumn evening sky, with Cetus being the southernmost.  While I sit there looking at the sky, Cetus stretches across it from just above the eastern horizon to the southeast.  It has some discernibly visible stars, but overall is still a relatively faint constellation.  As for the name Deneb Kaitos...

Deneb Kaitos, the more traditional name given to Beta Ceti, means "tail of the whale".  But just last year at a meeting of astronomers who apparently didn't have anything better to do, its official designation was changed to Diphda, which in Arabic means "second frog".  Diphda had been around for centuries as well and had been in a kind of competition with Deneb Kaitos for the star's name.  I grew up calling it Deneb Kaitos, but I'll keep Diphda handy in case that I hear or read someone discussing it that way.  As for "first frog", which star is that? The bright Fomalhaut of the constellation Piscis Austrinus, which just precedes it along approximately the same latitude in the sky.  Ah, now I see it: two frogs hopping endlessly across the heavens, one after the other...

Diphda, or Deneb Kaitos, or Beta Ceti, or Second Frog is an orange giant, much larger than our sun, cooler, and with a considerably shorter life span.  It is 96 light-years away and there haven't as yet been any planets discovered orbiting it (info provided by Wikipedia).   That's a bit different from "first frog" Fomalhaut, a triple-star system which is much closer at 25 light-years, the largest star not being a giant and recently discovered to possess a planetary system.   Sometimes while just sitting there gazing at the sky it's easy to just see the stars as dots...looking up facts about each of them can enhance the viewing experience...