West of Corona the most conspicuous object is Arcturus in Boötes. This entire constellation is now well placed for observation. But first a few words about Arcturus, a star of which one can never tire, so steeped is it in the poetry and history of the most interesting nations of the past. Like Alpha Centauri, Arcturus was used as a “temple star” in both Egypt and Greece, and it was of much importance as a prognosticator of the seasons. When a conspicuous star was seen rising just ahead of the sun, it was said to rise heliacally, and it served as a sentinel to announce the oncoming day. To the priests this was important, because it warned them of the moment when it was necessary to begin their preparations for the sunrise ceremonies in the temples. To the husbandman such a herald seemed specially connected with the particular season in which it appeared. In this way Arcturus came to give its name to the ancient Greek autumn. In Sophocles’ _Œdipus the King_ there is a passage which affords striking evidence of the popular knowledge of Arcturus in this connection. When the herdsman from Mount Cithæron is brought to prove that he had nurtured Œdipus as a child, one of his former comrades, to recall the old man’s recollections, reminds him that they had kept their flocks together “three whole half-years from Spring to Arcturus” (meaning from Spring to Autumn, since Arcturus then rose heliacally at the beginning of September). Whatever might be the local names for Autumn, over all the Greek world it was popularly known as the “time of Arcturus.” Although the Revised Version has struck out Arcturus and substituted “the Bear” in that famous passage in which the Almighty answers Job “out of the whirlwind,” yet for lovers of the Bible this will always be “Job’s Star,” always surrounded to the imagination with the momentous circumstances suggested by that tremendous and unanswerable demand: “Canst _thou_ call forth _Arcturus_ and his sons?” No scientific fact known about it--not its gigantic size, not its inexplicable flight through space--can be so imposing as the impressions conveyed in its choice by Jehovah to illustrate His illimitable power. One likes to think that the Hebrew poet really did mean to write “Arcturus,” for there is something sublime in the idea of representing the Great Maker of All as calling one of His stars by name.