Aurora elders from watching or interpreting the messages of ancestors they believed were transmitted through an aurora. "[[Bulfinch's Mythology]]" relates that in [[Norse mythology]], the armour of the [[Valkyrie|Valkyrior]] "sheds a strange flickering light, which flashes up over the northern skies, making what Men call the 'aurora borealis', or 'Northern Lights' ". There appears to be no evidence in [[Old Norse literature]] to substantiate this assertion. The first Old Norse account of "norðrljós" is found in the Norwegian chronicle "[[Konungs Skuggsjá]]" from AD 1230. The chronicler has heard about this phenomenon from compatriots returning from [[Greenland]], and he gives three possible
Corona Borealis respectively. Chinese astronomers deemed nine stars to make up the asterism, adding Pi and Rho Coronae Borealis. Within the constellation's borders, there are 37 stars brighter than or equal to apparent magnitude 6.5. Alpha Coronae Borealis (officially named Alphecca by the IAU, but sometimes also known as Gemma) appears as a blue-white star of magnitude 2.2. In fact, it is an Algol-type eclipsing binary that varies by 0.1 magnitude with a period of 17.4 days. The primary is a white main-sequence star of spectral type A0V that is 2.91 times the mass of the Sun () and 57 times as