Constellations II

Hello again.

Over the past few days, I started my research on these stars by searching through the web and looking at different images of the constellations and their positions.

"Just what are these constellations that you keep hearing about? What do they mean? Where did they come from?" If you can immediately see a fierce lion, a sea goat, or a giant scorpion when you look upon the sky in the dark night, you are either a great storyteller or you have an incredible imagination.  Majority of these constellations are not how they are supposed to look like.

In fact, they are not real!

First of all, what are constellations? I found out that they are just a group of stars that are connected by lines with our bare eyes and imagination to form what you call now, constellations.

This is a constellation of Leo, the lion.

Based on the image on the left, the actual constellation for Leo is very simple. This shows how the creators imagine it that forms a lion.

A simple but bright star is found in the middle of the alignment which is said to be the heart of each constellation. Constellations portray people, real animals and mythological creatures. (flying horses, serpents, dragons and many more)

 An imaginative constellation of a AK47.

(This is probably created by a gamer who got banned from playing video games at night)

Ps, This does not exist in the constellation chart

Where did they come from?

These imaginative pictures are created by ancient astronomers, poets and farmers. They were “invented” around 6,000 years ago. (Possibly even more!)

Back in the days, there were no modern network like twitter to “tweet” where you are, or google map to show where you are lost at. Therefore, creating these constellations helped the ancient civilizations to know the directions as well as remembering the position of the stars.

For ancient farmers, these constellations are very important to them as they need to know the planting and harvesting seasons. They plant in the spring and harvest during the fall. But in certain regions, there will not be much difference in the seasons. So, these position of the stars helped them to keep track and differentiate between the seasons to tell them which month it is for their harvest.

A diagram of the constellations and their seasons.

These myths of the stars are the different creatures and fantasies which are made up by our ancient ancestors. Each of them have their own identity and story. But after creating these myth about constellation, I guess it is also a good way for these myths to be passed on till the 21^st century!  

Other than those reasons, I think that the myths of the constellation happens to be another randomness created by us, humans. However, they are indeed interesting to know. Also, we can see how people use their imaginations and creativity!

Thank you for reading, I will update again soon.

 Vannessa.