What is a Constellation?
The constellations are totally imaginary things that poets, farmers and astronomers have made up over the past 6,000 years (and probably even more!). The real purpose for the constellations is to help us tell which stars are which, nothing more. On a really dark night, you can see about 1000 to 1500 stars. Trying to tell which is which is hard. If you were shown a map of the world then you would easily recognise the continents and countries and would be able to pick out cities and towns. Well let’s split the sky into continents, countries and cities. The constellations help by breaking up the sky into more manageable bits. For example, if you spot three bright stars in a row in the winter evening, you might realize, “That’s part of Orion!” Suddenly, the rest of the constellation falls into place and you can declare: “There’s Betelgeuse in Orion’s left shoulder and Rigel is his foot.” And once you recognize Orion, you can remember that Orion’s Hunting Dogs are always nearby. Then you mi
A constellation is a group of stars with a name assigned to it; the name is usually from Greek mythology. The stars of a constellation are located close to each other and form a pattern, although in most cases it is pretty much hopeless to try to picture a constellation looking like its namesake. Imagine the constellations picture being formed by straight lines drawn between its stars. The lines form geometric shapes, which are easy to remember.
To most people, a constellation is a group of stars which appear to form a picture in the sky, assuming one uses some poetic license. To astronomers, however, a constellation is a specific region of the sky, with astronomers breaking the visible sky up into 88 different constellations. Whether you are a layperson or an astronomer, constellations are a way of viewing the night sky and breaking the information in the sky up into usable chunks, rather than trying to take in the sky as a whole. In the lay sense, constellations have been an important part of many cultures. People have historically singled out clusters of stars and imagined patterns which surround them, from lions to ships, and many cultures have complex myths about the constellations and their origins. Some cultures also have stories about “dark constellations,” areas of the night sky which are totally darkened. Astronomers refer to constellations in the lay sense as “asterisms,” with some people preferring “classical const
• A constellation is a group of stars that seem to form a picture in the night sky. • The Greeks recognized and named forty-eight constellations. Many of these constellations were also recognized by the Arabs, Egyptians, and the Babylonian. In 1928, the International Astronomy Union fixed the boundaries of the eighty-eight constellations in the sky. Twelve constellations lie on the ecliptic and are known as “the Zodiacs.” Part of Ophiuchus lies on the ecliptic, so that makes thirteen ecliptic constellations. Twenty-nine constellations are between the ecliptic and the North Celestial Pole plus the remainder of Ophiuchus. Forty-seven constellations lie between the ecliptic zone and the South Celestial Pole. • The names of the constellations are given in Latin, because Latin was once the language of learning. The names used by the Greeks, Egyptians, and other people were translated into Latin. For convenience, the ancients named the constellations after a certain figure that it seemed to
A constellation is a group of stars that seem to form the shape of an animal, person, or object when viewed from the earth. The term comes from the Latin word stella, which means “star.” But the stars in a constellation only appear to form a shape, and may not even belong to the same group of stars or even the same galaxies. For
