Answer: This horse rides around all night long, upside down, with only two front legs and no backside, but with one bright and shiny belly button.

Question: Who is Pegasus?

Correct! In the northeastern skies at this time of the year rides the great constellation of Pegasus. Our equine friend is easy to spot. Its body, what there is of it, is that giant square in the sky, called, for obvious reasons, the Great Square of Pegasus.

Pegasus was the famous winged horse from Greek mythology born, as are most winged horses, from the blood of Medusa's head with just a couple tablespoons of sea foam tossed in. The famed horse's exploits are numerous and, unique to most characters of ancient mythology, relatively free of wrongdoing. On the contrary, it appears that most everyone got along with Pegasus and had nothing really bad to say about our benevolent beast of burden.

The whole of the constellation Pegasus consists of only the front of his body. The entire hindquarters are missing. And he is upside down. But let’s focus our attention now on the most obvious characteristic about the constellation, which is, as I mentioned above, the big fat square of stars. You cannot miss it. It is in the eastern skies in the evening now and there are essentially no stars in the middle of the square, so it stands out like a sore thumb - a gigantic, squarish sort of sore thumb.

Of course, other cultures saw different things in that cosmic quadrangle. The Hindus see the Great Square as a lunar mansion, a nakshatra, one of 27 resting places for the Moon as it travels through the skies.

According to Julius Staal is his book "The New Patterns in the Night Sky," the Arawak Indians of Guiana in South America saw the great pattern as a monstrous barbeque grill!

Let's take a closer look at those four stars in our horse's body. In the southwest corner of the Square, farthest to the "right" as it rises in the evening, is Markab. Though just a pinprick in the sky, it is one energetic star. Weighing in at almost 6 suns, it outshines our own star by nearly 200 times. This is a star best seen at a distance.

The "top" star of the Square is Scheat, an old dying red giant of a star nearly 200 light years away, but nearly 200 times bigger than our sun.

At the bottom is the star Algenib, a named derived from the Arabic al janah, "the wing." It marks - you'll never guess – a wing of Pegasus. This is one bad star. It is over three times hotter than our sun (that's really, really hot in Starville) and pours out more energy than 2500 suns! Thankfully it's over 300 light years away. We can all sleep better because of that.

The last star of the Great Square of Pegasus leads a duel life. It is known by some as Sirrah, from the Arabic, Al Surrat al Faras, "the Navel of the Horse." Honestly, I didn't know horses had belly buttons. Now that I think about it, I guess they have to.

But it also known as Alpheratz, and with that name belongs officially to the constellation of Andromeda. How can that be? A corner of the Great Square of Pegasus is actually in Andromeda? It appears that Princess Andromeda needed a head, of all things, so the star's main role today is to be a melon for her royal highness. So speaks modern astronomy. Sorry Pegasus!

Sometime in this next week go out to the starfields and take a look at our equine friend, what there is of him. Then consider yourself one constellation closer to fully knowing the night sky.