patterns in the sky- connect the dots

Lesson 7: Star Power: Playing Connect the Dots With Stars

What do you do with your free time when movies, television, and even radio haven’t been invented, and won’t be for hundreds, or even thousands of years? That's the issue our ancient ancestors faced. They told stories, performed plays, wrote poetry — and, at night — looked to the sky and the stars, wondering about what they saw.

These simple activities WERE the birth of astronomy. It was a simple beginning; people noticed the stars in the sky.

Then, they named the stars. The science of astronomy grew slowly, as scientists figured out what the different objects in the sky are and learned more about them by studying them through telescopes and other instruments.

The Birth of the Constellations

Besides stargazing, the ancients noticed that the stars appeared in patterns in the sky.

So, they played cosmic "connect the dots" with the stars to create patterns that looked like animals, gods, goddesses, and heroes. Then, they created stories about these patterns of stars, which are called constellations — or constellation outlines.

The constellation patterns and their stories date back thousands of years to many cultures. For example, the constellationsUrsa Major and Ursa Minor, the Big Bear and the Little Bear, have been used by different populations around the world to identify those stars since the Ice Ages.

Most names, however, come from ancient Greece and those are what we use. However, many other cultures throughout the world created their own patterns and stories for the stars, based on their own legends and beliefs.

Exploring a Star Pattern That's NOT a Constellation

In Lesson 6, you located the Big Dipper as a "landmark" in the sky. Although most people can recognize the Big Dipper, those seven stars are not really a constellation. They form what is what is known as an "asterism", or a group of stars. The Big Dipper is actually part of Ursa Major.

Likewise, the Little Dipper is a part of Ursa Minor. On the other hand, our "landmark" for the south, the Southern Cross is an actual constellation called Crux.Its long bar seems to point toward the actual region of the sky where Earth's south pole points (also called the South Celestial Pole).

There are 88 official constellations in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres of our sky. Depending on where you live, you will probably see more than half of them throughout the year. Study the stars in each constellation, and then as you get more familiar with them, start to look for other objects hidden among the stars. 

To figure out which constellations you're looking at in the night sky, you can use star charts (such as those found online at Sky&Telescope.com or Astronomy.com. Or, you can use planetarium software such as Stellarium (Stellarium.org), or an astronomy app on your portable device. There are many apps and programs that will help you make useful star charts for your observing enjoyment.

Next lesson, we'll take a look closer to home and study our own solar system.