Stars vary greatly in size, distance from Earth, and temperature. Dimmer stars may be smaller, farther away, or cooler than brighter stars. By the same token, the brightest stars are not necessarily the closest. Of the stars in Cygnus, the swan, the faintest star is the closest and the brightest star is the farthest! How are constellations named? Most of the constellation names we know came from the ancient Middle Eastern, Greek, and Roman cultures. They identified clusters of stars as gods, goddesses, animals, and objects of their stories.
It is important to understand that these were not the only cultures populating the night sky with characters important to their lives. Cultures all over the world and throughout time — Native American, Asian, and African — have made pictures with those same stars.
In some cases the constellations may have had ceremonial or religious significance. In other cases, the star groupings helped to mark the passage of time between planting and harvesting. There are 38 modern constellations. In the International Astronomical Union officially listed 88 modern and ancient constellations one of the ancient constellations was divided into 3 parts and drew a boundary around each. The boundary edges meet, dividing the imaginary sphere — the celestial sphere — surrounding Earth into 88 pieces.
Astronomers consider any star within a constellation boundary to be part of that constellation, even if it is not part of the actual picture. Are all stars part of a constellation? No, there are billions of stars, and only a fraction of them make up the shapes of our constellations — these are the stars that are easily seen with the unaided eye. Ancient observers connected these stars into the star pictures. All stars, however, fall within the boundaries of one of the 88 constellation regions.
As astronomers studied the night sky with modern telescopes, they were able to discern stars in the dark spaces around the constellations — stars that were not part of the original star pictures.
You can see some of these stars by observing the sky on a dark night. If you look at the sky with binoculars, you will see even more stars. If you have a telescope, you will see even more! All the stars you see belong to one special group of stars — the stars in our own galaxy, the Milky Way.
Aside from being an astronomer, Hevelius was an artist, engraver, well-to-do man of affairs and a leading citizen of Danzig, Poland. Interestingly, the old astronomy books and sky charts , which depicted the constellations as allegorical drawings, placed the lucida brightest star of Lynx in the tuft of its tail. In creating Lynx , Hevelius chose a cat-like animal that possesses excellent eyesight.
Lynx itself is a region chiefly devoid of bright stars, and Hevelius openly admitted that you would have to have the eyes of a lynx to see it. Another faint star pattern now no longer recognized is Felis, the Cat, which was the creation of an 18th century Frenchman, Joseph Jerome Le Francais de Lalande The starry sky has worried me quite enough in my life, so that now I can have my joke with it.
Although this celestial feline does not exist today, cat fanciers will be consoled by the fact that there are three other members of the cat family — Leo the Lion , Leo Minor the Smaller Lion and Lynx — that are well situated and close together in our current evening sky. Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille is considered a pioneer in astronomy. Between and , this modest, but hardworking French astronomer was stationed at the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, where he catalogued the positions of 9, southern stars in just 11 months.
The truth is, at one point, our ancestors decided to give names to the pictures they saw in the sky. In this regard, the constellations are a product of human imagination and observation. One of our earliest attempts of explaining the complex universe that surrounds us.
It is widely known that the constellations we know today originated in ancient Greece but how did they come about? The constellations are much more than patterns of stars in the sky. In fact, astronomy is pretty much the oldest science known to mankind. From time immemorial, human civilizations would look up at the sky and wonder what makes it tick.
And no wonder. Despite all their mysteries, our ancestors eventually realized that the motions of the stars were regular and predictable. This allowed them to come up for different uses for them: from religious and mythological purposes to agriculture and navigation. Not only did the stars allow farmers to plan ahead and form agriculture, sailors and travelers would also use the position of the stars to find their way among the seas, or hostile deserts.
Long before the existence of GPS and smartphones, it was the stars which guided us. And constellations made it easier to recognize and interpret these patterns in the sky. As far as we know, the ancient Greeks were among the first to use the appearance or disappearance of certain stars over the course of each year to mark the ever-changing seasons. One explanation of the origin of the Greek constellations is that it was much easier to read the stars if they were grouped into recognizable shapes and figures.
For the Greeks, the constellations were also a way of preserving their folklore and mythology. The images depicted in the Greek constellations are god-favoured heroes and beasts who received a place amongst the stars in tribute for their deeds. They were regarded as mystical spirits who strode across the heavens and watched over mankind. Our understanding of the stars and the night sky is deeply influenced by the observations made by the ancient Greeks.
0コメント