The Zodiac --- The Constellation of Pisces the Fishes

The asterism of Pisces The Fishes.

Pisces The Fishes is the twelfth constellation of the Zodiac, a large but dim V-shaped asterism that is meant to suggest two fishes tied together with a long cord. According to Greek mythology, the fishes were the goddess Aphrodite and her brother the god Eros, who turned themselves into fishes to escape the monster Typhon, much as the god Pan had turned himself into Capricornus The Sea-Goat to escape Typhon. 

 

Pisces was recognized by the Mesopotamians, but the mythology of the asterism shifted over the millennia, only becoming associated with sea creatures as that region of the sky assumed a unique identity. Though Zodiacal, Pisces, like Aquarius and Capricornus, is also associated with the neighboring constellations of the Celestial Sea. 

Aphrodite and Eros (Greek) or Venus and Cupid (Roman).

Pisces is remarkable as the current actual home of the Vernal Equinox (The First Point of Aries), the Prime Meridian of the sky. Astronomically, the Sun is in Pisces from March 12th to April 18th. 

None of the stars of Pisces exceed the fourth magnitude, making it one of the dimmest constellations. Alpherg, Pisces' brightest star, is 300 light years from Earth and is 316 times as luminous as our Sun. 

A perfect view of a spiral galaxy, Messier 74. The bright "star" in the lower left is a supernova.

Pisces contains the deep sky objects Messier 74, a face-on spiral galaxy, and the two interacting galaxies Pisces A and Pisces B, which are apparently pirouetting around one another.

The dancing galaxies of Pisces A and Pisces B. Gravitational interaction is distorting them. The star "between" them is actually thousand of light years in the foreground, and is in the Milky Way, our own galaxy.