Today, we know any relationship to be purely superficial since their positions are only relative to the position from which they are viewed from Earth. A description of their agreed-upon boundaries was published at Cambridge, England, in 1930, under the title CГ©leste. The patterns of the constellations were invented as distinctive, easy-to-remember patterns of stars as seen from Earth.Дuring the Astronomical Congress of 1928, it was decided to recognize 88 constellations. By linking particular patterns or groups of stars many ancient civilizations used them for understanding the universe through the creation of mythology. It has always been very seductive to think that the stars are positioned in such an order that a relationship between them might be established. But what connects the stars in the same constellation? Go to Next Section or to Top of Page to Select or to Main Menu.The 88 constellations act as a handy map of the skies and a seasonal calendar used from ancient times. See ' The Constallations' (access from 'The Main Menu') and ' The Constellations and their Stars' for more information on the subject. Thus the brightest star in Orion is Alpha Orion, which is also known as Betelgeuse.ДЇigure 08-01c Constalla- tions ДЇigure 08-01d Constallation Names

To the Greek letter name is appended the Latin possessive form of the constellation name. To bring order from the chaos of naming stars, around the year 1600 Johannes Bayer, in what is now Germany, applied lower case Greek letter names to the stars more or less in order of brightness, rendering the brightest star in a constellation 'Alpha', the second 'Beta', and so on. General direction of an object on the celestial sphere (see Figure 08-01e). The constellations are now used to locate the Although the stars that make up a constellation appear relatively close together in the sky, they are not, in general, physically close in space. City light may actually help to bring out the shapes better because of less distraction from the dimmer stars. Others such as the Great Bear and Pisces request a lot of imagination to figure out. Some of the configurations such as Scorpius and Southern Cross are rather obvious. The Greek astronomer Ptolemy, in the 2 nd century A.D., listed 48 constellations (Figure 08-01d), the names of which are still in use today. The ancient astronomers divided up the starry sky into patterns, or constellations (see Figure 08-01c), which they named after personalities and creatures from their mythologies. More detailed description of the instruments used by astronomers today can be found in the appendix: Astronomical Instruments. He also discovered sun spots and Jupiter's 4 satellites. He used a 30X telescope from lenses made by himself to draw a picture of theДЇigure 08-01b Ancient Observatory Modern astronomical instrument was first constructed by Galileo Galilei (1564-1642). Figure 08-01b is the 13th-century Beijing Ancient Observatory - one of the most advanced facilities in the pretelescopic era.

The first record of a total eclipse of the sun was made in China as early as 899 BC. It was built around 1500 BC outside Salisbury, England to track the movement of the sun and mark the solstice. The Stonehenge (Figure 08-01a) is possibly the oldest astronomical instrument.

Supernovae, Neutron Stars, Pulsars, Magnetar, and GRB Contents Ancient Astronomy and Constellations

Stars constellations