Category: astronomy

It was a pleasant surprise to find that David Dickinson had tweeted:

Forbidden Island: http://universalworkshop.com/guysblog/2014/12/17/forbidden-island/ A wonderful constellation-based riddle courtesy of @guyottewell #Space #Astronomy

and this somehow got into Astronomy News on Reddit.com and was “favorited.” I’m not sure I have that terminology right – I don’t yet speak Socialmedian.

Anyway it encourages me to serve up another riddle. What is this constellation? Its traditional name is from something it doesn’t much look like, and it has been likened to something else, and those two things (the one it slightly looks like and the one it’s supposed to be) rhyme.

The pelvis is my own, viewed from the front.

Fifteen days after my fall into a rocky river, the slight pain that prevents me from walking without crutches was not receding and they took me back for a second x-ray. The doctor showed me this image. Where there is one fine white line defining the concave upper edge of the long bone (called the pubis) on one side, there are on the other side two parallel lines close together (arrowed by me). This shows a crack, which will heal itself (unless I do anything else stupid) in about six weeks (less, I hope). He took a photo of his computer screen for me with my iPad.

All this care, under the British health service, has cost me nothing, except for one car journey to the hospital town thirty miles away.

You guessed the constellation easily, I expect: the one that is supposed to be a goat but looks more like a boat. The Sun is in it now, according to astrology, having entered it at midwinter, though in the real sky the Sun won’t move into it till January 20.