The Eagle pictured on the star maps is a very large bird, but the only portion of him not difficult to locate in the sky are the three bright stars which hang like a bar across his neck. [Figure 77] These stars alone suggest a bird flying with outstretched wings. This is a region of birds, for the great Cross with Cygnus, the Swan, drifts down the Milky Way between the two Eagles. The "three birds" are most effective and easily located when seen on the meridian in midsummer, for they then form a large triangle across the star stream, Lyra and Aquila being at the edges of the stream and at the base of the triangle with the center of the Cross at its peak. One day Jupiter sent this eagle who is now in the sky down from Mount Olympus to seize a beautiful youth named Ganymede who was tending his father's flocks on Mount Ida. This youth was then carried up to the palaces of the Gods and given the position of cupbearer. The Greeks believed that Jupiter gave Ganymede's grieving father a pair of divine horses as a compensation for kidnaping his boy and comforted him at the same time by saying that Ganymede had now become immortal and free from all earthly ills. The eagle was rewarded for its daring by being placed among the constellations. Ganymede was also, in due time, honored in the same manner and is represented by the constellation Aquarius, the Waterbearer, despite the fact that it was nectar, and not water, that this youth poured in the cups of the gods. Aquarius lies east of Aquila. The large white star in the center of the three stars which hang on the neck of the Eagle is called Altair. Altair rises a little north of east with its twin stars Alshain and Trazed, about 9 o'clock on the 29th of May. It arrives at the meridian at 10 o'clock August 18th, at 9 o'clock September 2nd, and at 8 o'clock September 18th. [Figure 78] It is then about two-thirds of the way up from the horizon. The three stars are called "The Shaft of Altair." Altair is one of the nearest of the brightest stars and is approaching the earth at the rate of 20 miles a second. You may step out now and look up at this star with a personal interest, but it is still far away. Indeed it is so very far away that generations will live and die and still an increase in its light will scarcely be noticeable. A small arrow studded with five stars lies, pointing east, in the Milky Way, slightly to the north of Altair. These stars lie in the constellation of Sagitta, the Arrow, which the Greeks may have considered an arrow of Hercules aimed at one of the bird constellations, or the arrow with which the hero slew the vulture which tormented Prometheus on the top of the Caucasus mountains. It is sometimes also called "Cupid's Arrow." Sagitta is one of the oldest of the constellations, its history being lost even in the time of Aratus. DELPHINUS, THE DOLPHIN [Figure 79]