Great Diamond
asterism
The Great Diamond, also called the Diamond of Virgo, is an asterism that can be seen during spring evenings in the Northern Hemisphere. It is composed of the following stars:
Cor Caroli (α CVn), in Canes Venatici
Denebola (β Leo), the tail of Leo
Spica (α Vir), the wheat of Virgo
Arcturus (α Boo), the brightest star in Boötes
The Great Diamond is larger than the Big Dipper. The three southernmost stars are sometimes regarded as being their own asterism, the Spring Triangle.
Lying within the Great Diamond is the set of stars traditionally assigned to Coma Berenices. Many nearby galaxies, including galaxies in the Virgo Cluster, are within this asterism, and some of these galaxies can easily be observed with amateur telescopes.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Great Diamond” as asterism. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 22, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q3497268.
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This entry incorporates text from “Great Diamond” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.