How to Learn the Constellations

For thousands of years, people have used stars as a means of navigating. They have also fostered some of our most common myths. Astronomers have created 88 groupings of stars and galaxies into what are called constellations. Learning the constellations is very interesting especially for anyone interested in astronomy. Explore the heavens by learning the constellations.

Instructions

1. Learn the basics of stargazing. Learn how different objects are rated according to their brightness, their "magnitudes." But the system is a counter-intuitive because most objects are assigned positive number, the greater the number, the DIMMER the object. Very bright objects like the sun have negative numbers (-27 for the sun.)

2. Realize that modern constellations--groupings of stars--are sometimes based upon constellations invented by ancient civilizations. These civilizations grouped these stars together they seemed to form mythical characters. They may not really be the best grouping possible. Groupings of stars that appear that they should be constellations but are not are called "asterisms."

3. Learn what the night sky looks like according to the time of year by using a website such as dustbunny.com (see Resources below). Learn about phases of the moon and develop an understanding of why the time of year has an influence on how the night sky appears.

4. Copy one of the star maps from a website like dustbunny.com that corresponds to your time of the year (in the northern hemisphere.) Find a reasonable viewing site as described in the University of Michigan's lowbrow guide to star watching. Identify Orion (autumn morning), the Big Dipper (winter morning), the Summer Triangle (spring morning) or the Great Square of Pegasus (summer morning.) These are basic starting landmarks.

5. Spend a few nights simply orienting yourself to looking at the night and orienting yourself by returning to your landmark. Decide what kind of resource you want to use to help you identify stars, planets, and constellations. There are online computer programs that can produce star maps for every day of the year or instruct you in the construction of a planisphere.

6. Decide if you wish to go further and invest in a telescope. There are telescopes that can hook directly into laptops and find magnitude 6 stars.

Resources

• Astronomy basics, including magnitudes.
• Catalog of all the constellations.
• Website that describes the night sky with regard to the time of year.
• Website with useful information as well as links to commercial companies.