Mythology:
According to the Greek stories, Cygnus and Phaethon were two young men
who were good friends. Phaethon was the son of Apollo, and he asked
his father if he could do his job: drive the Sun chariot across the
sky. Apollo hesitantly agreed, and Phaeton did such a poor job steering
the Sun across the sky that it angered Zeus. Zeus cast Phaethon out
of the Sun Chariot, where he fell to Earth and landed in the river Eridanus,
a very swift and dangerous river. Cygnus was saddened by the loss
of his dear friend. Here, the story has two endings. In the
first, Cygnus risks his own life to dive into the river to retrieve his
friend's body and give it a proper burial. In the second, Cygnus
wanders up and down the shore of the river singing and mourning.
In either case, the Gods were so moved by Cygnus' dedication to his friend
that when he died his body was changed into a swan and placed among the
stars. In fact, the modern expression "swan song" comes from this
story -- every time a swan dies Cygnus can be heard singing his sad song.
A less common, but more parallel to the other classical mythological stories,
tale states that Cygnus is actually Zeus himself, disguised as the Swan
to fool his wife Hera as he goes to meet or seduce a mortal woman.
Or, Zeus could be flying off to meet the Sea Nymph Nemesis (it is not clear
who Zeus is flying off to meet). If Cygnus (Zeus) was truly flying
to meet Nemesis, the result of their rendezvous was an egg (since Zeus
had taken the form of a bird), which was placed in the care of Queen Leda
of the city-state Sparta. (The issue is not whether Zeus and Nemesis
did indeed have an affair. What is not clear is if Cygnus -- Zeus
-- was flying off to meet her or some other woman.) The egg hatched
a beautiful girl, who grew up to be one of the more famous beautiful women
in mythology -- Helen of Troy.
It doesn't stop there: In yet another interpretation, Zeus is flying
to meet with Leda. To fool her husband, King Tyndareus, Leda also
slept with him after sleeping with Zeus. Supposedly this let to two
eggs, which yielded the twins Castor and Polydeuces (whose name became
Pollux in the Roman versions of the story). This twins are, of course,
referred to as Gemini, a constellation of the zodiac.
It can get even more complicated -- some versions outline the following:
As a result of Zeus' and Leda's rendezvous, Helen and Polydeuces were born;
as a result of Leda's and Tyndareus' rendezvous Castor and Clytemnestra
were born. Although it starts to get very intertwined, do note that
in this version of the story, one of the Gemini Twins, Polydeuces or Pollux,
is immortal, while the other, Castor, is mortal.
Other Interesting
Sights: The large open cluster M39 is in Cygnus
at a distance of 800 light years. But more interesting is the object
Cygnus X-1, the first and strongest evidence for a black hole. Cygnus
X-1 is a powerful source of x-rays. It is theorized that the black
hole Cygnus X-1 is pulling matter off a star it orbits, HDE 226868, and
the matter heats up as it falls toward the black hole, giving off x-rays.
-Note: The
same stars that give us the constellation Cygnus the Swan also make up
the asterism the Northern Cross.
-Interesting Trivia:
The star Albireo literally means "the beak," and Deneb means, well, "rear
end of the swan."
Open Cluster M39
Cygnus X-1 -- a possible black hole.
(Photo and diagram from NASA)