What is a Constellation?
When you go outside on a dark clear night, look up into the night sky and see hundreds if not thousands of stars randomly spread across the sky – how do you tell one from another? The answer is you learn the constellations. 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
