50 Fun Facts About Pegasus

Pegasus is a winged horse from which mythology?

Long honored as a constellation, he also appears constantly on ancient Greek pottery and in Renaissance painting and sculpture.

Pegasus was born from the blood of which monster when she was beheaded?

Her sisters Stheno and Euryale were immortal, so Perseus could only kill her.

Which god sired Pegasus, in his role as god of horses?

The sea god was also credited in some versions with mingling his sea foam into the horse's making.

Pegasus had a brother born at the same moment. What was his name?

His name means 'he who has a golden sword', and he went on to father the three-bodied Geryon.

An ancient folk etymology derives Pegasus's name from a Greek word meaning what?

A rival theory derives it from a Luwian storm-god's name meaning 'lightning', which fits his later role as Zeus's lightning-bearer.

The spring Hippocrene, sacred to the Muses, was said to have formed when Pegasus did what?

Drinking its water was supposed to bring poetic inspiration, which is why Keats asks for a beaker of it in Ode to a Nightingale.

The Hippocrene spring lies on which mountain?

The name literally means 'horse's fountain'.

Bellerophon carried a sealed letter to King Iobates asking the king to do what?

Iobates feasted him for nine days before opening it, then dodged the guest-murder taboo by sending him on a supposedly fatal monster hunt instead.

What did Athena give Bellerophon to help him tame Pegasus?

The seer Polyeidos had told him to sleep in Athena's temple, where the gift appeared beside him in a dream.

Bellerophon caught Pegasus while the horse was drinking at which spring in Corinth?

Corinth later put Pegasus on its coins as a civic emblem.

Riding Pegasus, Bellerophon killed which fire-breathing monster?

One version has him ramming a lump of lead into the beast's throat, where its own fiery breath melted the metal and choked it.

The fire-breathing beast Bellerophon slew is shown as a lion with a serpent's tail and which animal's head on its back?

Its Greek name literally means 'she-goat'.

Bellerophon defeated the Amazons from the back of Pegasus by doing what?

In some tellings he faced the Solymi tribe first.

What did Zeus send to make Pegasus throw Bellerophon when the hero tried to fly to Olympus?

Some versions have the blinded hero wandering the Plain of Aleion in misery for the rest of his life.

After reaching Olympus, Pegasus was given what job by Zeus?

His stablemates included Zeus's attendants Astrape and Bronte, lightning and thunder personified.

Which archaic Greek poet first wrote that Pegasus carried thunderbolts for Zeus?

The same poet's Theogony calls the horse's birthplace 'the springs of Oceanus'.

Legend says a Pegasus feather fell near which city when Zeus made him a constellation?

The reward was framed as thanks for years of faithful thunderbolt service.

A Roman connection: Bellerophon's grandson Glaucus tells the hero's story in which epic?

It is one of the poem's embedded family histories, told during a battlefield meeting with Diomedes.

Pegasus was one of how many constellations listed by Ptolemy in the 2nd century?

The IAU's official list, fixed in 1922, runs to 88.

The brightest star in the Pegasus constellation, Enif, marks which part of the horse?

It is an orange supergiant roughly 12 times the Sun's mass, about 690 light-years away.

The Great Square of Pegasus is completed by a star that officially belongs to which constellation?

Alpheratz was known as Delta Pegasi until the 1922 boundary-setting handed it to Andromeda.

By area, where does Pegasus rank among the 88 modern constellations?

It covers 1,121 square degrees and can be seen in full from anywhere north of 53 degrees south.

Which 10th-century astronomer drew Pegasus as a complete horse rather than half a horse?

In his version the horse's head was borrowed from the stars of Lacerta the lizard.

Which Babylonian constellation, meaning 'field', supplied three stars of the Greek Pegasus?

The Persians, Chinese and Hindus all mapped their own figures onto the same patch of sky.

51 Pegasi b, discovered in 1995, was the first exoplanet found orbiting what?

It orbits its star in about four days, far closer than Mercury is to the Sun, and became the prototype 'hot Jupiter'.

The discoverers of 51 Pegasi b, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, shared which honour in 2019?

They found it with the ELODIE spectrograph in Haute-Provence, and another team at Lick Observatory confirmed it within a week.

What official name did the IAU give to the planet 51 Pegasi b in 2015?

It is Latin for 'half', because the planet has about half the mass of Jupiter; astronomer Geoffrey Marcy had unofficially called it Bellerophon.

M15, the globular cluster in Pegasus, was discovered in 1746 by which astronomer?

It contains Pease 1, the first planetary nebula ever found inside a globular cluster.

Which compact group of five interacting galaxies lies in Pegasus?

Astronomers expect all five to eventually merge into one giant elliptical galaxy.

Einstein's Cross, in Pegasus, is a quasar whose light has been split into four images by what?

The lensing galaxy is 400 million light-years away; the quasar behind it is 8 billion.

British paratroops adopted a Bellerophon-on-Pegasus insignia in 1941. What colour are their berets?

The colour earned them the German nickname 'Red Devils'; the Parachute Regiment's selection course is still called P Company.

Pegasus Bridge, seized by British glider troops on D-Day, crosses which waterway?

The original 1934 bascule bridge was replaced in 1994 and is now the centrepiece of a museum at Ranville.

Who commanded the glider force that took Pegasus Bridge in the opening minutes of 6 June 1944?

His 181 men flew in six Horsa gliders from RAF Tarrant Rushton in Dorset.

Which oil brand has used a red winged horse as its trademark since the 1930s?

The horse came from Magnolia Petroleum, and a giant version still stands atop the Magnolia building in Dallas.

Which Hollywood studio's logo features Pegasus flying across the screen?

The idea came from executive Victor Kaufman's family love of riding, and the original horse had appeared in The Electric Horseman.

Pegasus is a symbol of which Italian region, ever since Benvenuto Cellini put it on a coin in 1537?

The winged horse also served as the emblem of Tuscany's anti-Nazi National Liberation Committee.

The Taiwanese electronics firm Asus took its name from Pegasus by doing what?

The idea was to appear near the top of alphabetical phone listings; spin-off Pegatron kept the first four letters instead.

Pegasus, the notorious phone spyware, was created by a company based in which country?

Citizen Lab first caught it in 2016 in a failed attempt to hack the iPhone of activist Ahmed Mansoor.

The Pegasus World Cup, first run in 2017, is held at which racetrack?

Its $12 million debut purse made it the world's richest horse race for two years, and a 110-foot Pegasus statue stands at the track.

Pegasus Airlines is a low-cost carrier from which country?

It began in 1989 as a charter airline in partnership with Aer Lingus.

The Pegasus rocket, first flown in 1990, was unusual for being launched how?

It fell for five seconds from about 40,000 feet before its first stage ignited, and was the world's first privately developed orbital launcher.

In Disney's Hercules (1997), who provides the voice of Pegasus?

The film's marketing tour even included a miniature carousel themed to Baby Pegasus.

In Clash of the Titans (1981), who destroyed all of Zeus's sacred flying horses except Pegasus?

The film also hands Pegasus to Perseus rather than Bellerophon, following the medieval mix-up.

In Fantasia (1940), pegasi appear in the segment set to which composer's Pastoral Symphony?

The segment's Greco-Roman world also features centaurs, 'centaurettes', fauns and a thunderbolt-hurling Zeus.

In Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus (2005), the winged horse is revealed to be Princess Annika's what?

The wizard Wenlock had transformed Brietta after she refused to marry him; it was the only Barbie film released in 3D.

A racehorse named Fusaichi Pegasus won which race in 2000?

Fittingly, Pegasus is also the mascot of the Kentucky Derby Festival in Louisville.

In Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson books, Percy's pegasus friend is called what?

Pegasus himself finally shows up in The Blood of Olympus as the father of all pegasi.

A proposed etymology links Pegasus to 'pihassas', meaning lightning, in which ancient language?

Pihassassi was a Cilician weather god of thunder and lightning, which fits Pegasus carrying Zeus's thunderbolts.

Which London legal society has a pegasus rampant on its coat of arms?

In British heraldry the winged horse usually appears as a supporter or crest rather than on the shield.

What did the Great Square of Pegasus represent to the Warrau and Arawak peoples of Guyana?

In their myth of Siritjo, seven hunters carried it up to the sky.