Constellations

Children and adults around the world love gazing at the stars, connecting the dots to form shapes they have been told about or creating their own.

Constellation Guide | StarDate Online

But these collections likely originated as important instruments to help people mark the time of year. Today, star constellations continue to stand as tools for astronomers and stargazers. Stars move across the sky on a regular schedule, much like the sun. At various times of year, different constellations appear at sunset.

The rising constellations rotate based on the Earth's path through space, and so can be used to mark the seasons in regions when moderate weather may not convey the change between winter and spring. Most of the constellations in the northern skies bear Greek and Roman names, but people were mapping the sky long before these empires took hold. The Greeks adopted their system from the Babylonians, whose origins may have stemmed from Sumerian traditions 3, years before.

Even further back, scientists suspect that markings on the cave walls at Lascaux in southern France — created over 17, years ago — may chart the Pleiades and Hyades star clusters, making it the first known star map. But these constellations aren't drawn to connect certain stars, they're actually more-or-less rectangular slices of the heavens holding the stars within them.

Formally cementing these boundaries allows astronomers to communicate about the regions of the sky they study. Within these 88 regions are the individual groupings that people think of as constellations. For instance, the constellation of Ursa Major contains all of the stars around the shape known by the same name. However, many of the groupings most people consider to be constellations aren't officially constellations. The Big Dipper, for example, which lays inside of Ursa Major, is not recognized as a constellation.

Instead, it is an asterism, or a group of stars not officially designated but known by most nonastronomers. As the Earth rotates, the sun, the moon and planets travel on a set path through the sky known as the ecliptic. The list of 13 constellations they pass through are known as the stars of the zodiac.

Mesopotamian constellations appeared later in many of the classical Greek constellations. However, the numerous Sumerian names in these catalogues suggest that they built on older, but otherwise unattested, Sumerian traditions of the Early Bronze Age. The Greeks adopted the Babylonian constellations in the 4th century BC.

Twenty Ptolemaic constellations are from the Ancient Near East. Another ten have the same stars but different names. Bullinger interpreted some of the creatures mentioned in the books of Ezekiel and Revelation as the middle signs of the four quarters of the Zodiac, [20] [21] with the Lion as Leo , the Bull as Taurus , the Man representing Aquarius and the Eagle standing in for Scorpio.

What Are The Constellations?

There is only limited information on ancient Greek constellations, with some fragmentary evidence being found in the Works and Days of the Greek poet Hesiod , who mentioned the "heavenly bodies". The original work of Eudoxus is lost, but it survives as a versification by Aratus , dating to the 3rd century BC. The most complete existing works dealing with the mythical origins of the constellations are by the Hellenistic writer termed pseudo-Eratosthenes and an early Roman writer styled pseudo- Hyginus.

The basis of Western astronomy as taught during Late Antiquity and until the Early Modern period is the Almagest by Ptolemy , written in the 2nd century. In the Ptolemaic Kingdom , native Egyptian tradition of anthropomorphic figures representing the planets, stars, and various constellations. The oldest known depiction of the zodiac showing all the now familiar constellations, along with some original Egyptian constellations, decans , and planets.

Ancient China had a long tradition of observing celestial phenomena. These constellations are some of the most important observations of Chinese sky, attested from the 5th century BC. Parallels to the earliest Babylonian Sumerian star catalogues suggest that the ancient Chinese system did not arise independently. Three schools of classical Chinese astronomy in the Han period are attributed to astronomers of the earlier Warring States period.

The constellations of the three schools were conflated into a single system by Chen Zhuo , an astronomer of the 3rd century Three Kingdoms period. Chen Zhuo's work has been lost, but information on his system of constellations survives in Tang period records, notably by Qutan Xida.

The oldest extant Chinese star chart dates to that period and was preserved as part of the Dunhuang Manuscripts. Native Chinese astronomy flourished during the Song dynasty , and during the Yuan dynasty became increasingly influenced by medieval Islamic astronomy see Treatise on Astrology of the Kaiyuan Era.

A well known map from the Song period is the Suzhou Astronomical Chart , which was prepared with carvings of stars on the planisphere of the Chinese sky on a stone plate; it is done accurately based on observations, and it shows the supernova of the year of in Taurus. Influenced by European astronomy during the late Ming dynasty , more stars were depicted on the charts but retaining the traditional constellations; new stars observed were incorporated as supplementary stars in old constellations in the southern sky which did not depict any of the traditional stars recorded by ancient Chinese astronomers.

Historically, the origins of the constellations of the northern and southern skies are distinctly different. Most northern constellations date to antiquity, with names based mostly on Classical Greek legends. Some southern constellations had long names that were shortened to more usable forms; e. Musca Australis became simply Musca.

Are the stars in a constellation the same distance from us?

Some of the early constellations were never universally adopted. Stars were often grouped into constellations differently by different observers, and the arbitrary constellation boundaries often led to confusion as to which constellation a celestial object belonged. Before astronomers delineated precise boundaries starting in the 19th century , constellations generally appeared as ill-defined regions of the sky.

The star atlas " Uranometria " of Johann Bayer assigned stars to individual constellations and formalized the division by assigning a series of Greek and Latin letters to the stars within each constellation. These are known today as Bayer designations. Knowledge that northern and southern star patterns differed goes back to Classical writers, who describe, for example, the African circumnavigation expedition commissioned by Egyptian Pharaoh Necho II in c.

However, much of this history was lost with the Destruction of the Library of Alexandria. The history of southern constellations is not straightforward. Different groupings and different names were proposed by various observers, some reflecting national traditions or designed to promote various sponsors. Southern constellations were important from the 14th to 16th centuries, when sailors used the stars for celestial navigation.

Italian explorers who recorded new southern constellations include Andrea Corsali , Antonio Pigafetta , and Amerigo Vespucci. Many of the 88 IAU-recognized constellations in this region first appeared on celestial globes developed in the late 16th century by Petrus Plancius , based mainly on observations of the Dutch navigators Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser [36] and Frederick de Houtman. Several modern proposals have not survived. The French astronomers Pierre Lemonnier and Joseph Lalande , for example, proposed constellations that were once popular but have since been dropped.

A general list of 88 constellations was produced for the International Astronomical Union in In , Henry Norris Russell produced a general list of 88 constellations and some useful abbreviations for them. In , the International Astronomical Union IAU formally accepted 88 modern constellations , with contiguous boundaries [49] along vertical and horizontal lines of right ascension and declination developed by Eugene Delporte that, together, cover the entire celestial sphere; [50] [51] this list was finally published in The aim of this system is area-mapping, i.

Equirectangular plot of declination vs right ascension of stars brighter than apparent magnitude 5 on the Hipparcos Catalogue , coded by spectral type and apparent magnitude, relative to the modern constellations and the ecliptic.

History of constellations

The boundaries developed by Delporte used data that originated back to epoch B Gould first made his proposal to designate boundaries for the celestial sphere, a suggestion upon which Delporte would base his work. The consequence of this early date is that because of the precession of the equinoxes , the borders on a modern star map, such as epoch J , are already somewhat skewed and no longer perfectly vertical or horizontal.

Equirectangular plot of declination vs right ascension of the 88 modern constellations , colour-coded by family and year established. The Great Rift, a series of dark patches in the Milky Way , is more visible and striking in the southern hemisphere than in the northern. It vividly stands out when conditions are otherwise so dark that the Milky Way's central region casts shadows on the ground.

1. The Constellations.
2. What are constellations?.
3. Halaka.
4. Illumination: Spiritual Emergence and the Evolution of the Soul.
5. Constellations: The Zodiac Constellation Names.
6. LEVITICUS - All The Bible Teaches About.
7. What are constellations? - Sky & Telescope.

Members of the Inca civilization identified various dark areas or dark nebulae in the Milky Way as animals and associated their appearance with the seasonal rains. The Emu in the sky —a constellation defined by dark clouds rather than by stars. The head of the emu is the Coalsack with the Southern Cross directly above. Scorpius is to the left. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article is about the star grouping. For other uses, see Constellation disambiguation.

Egyptian astronomy and Ancient Greek astronomy. Chinese constellations and Chinese astronomy. Constellations listed by Johannes Hevelius , Category: Constellations listed by Lacaille , and Former constellations. Star portal Astronomy portal Space portal. Retrieved 2 August The introduction of the uniform zodiac". Archive for History of Exact Sciences. Retrieved 21 September Retrieved November 27, In Quest of the Universe. M; Bretagnon, P; Brumberg, V. M; Xu, C Journal of the British Astronomical Association. Sumerian constellations and star names?

Retrieved 30 August William Bullinger 7 June The Witness of the Stars. The Real Meaning of the Zodiac. Coral Ridge Ministries Media, Incorporated.