Observing the stars, it seems that they are all chaotically scattered across the sky and do not correspond to their names at all. What were the guides of astronomers, highlighting them in the constellations and giving them names? We'll figure out.
Lesser Lions and Great Hydras
The stars that we see from the ground may be millions of light years apart, but it seems to us that they are very close and fold into a certain shape - a cross, a crown, a triangle … The first constellations were identified a very long time ago, about five thousand years ago … It all started when people noticed that the sky was not randomly strewn with sparkling dots, that the same stars with familiar outlines appeared from the horizon every night. In fact, the constellations we know are very different from how the ancients represented them.
In the era of the Ancient World and the Middle Ages, people singled out only groups of the brightest stars. It often happened that the dim and imperceptible stars did not enter any constellation.
Only in the XVI-XVII centuries. they entered the star atlases. Even ancient astronomers mentioned several stars above the bright constellation Leo, but only in 1690 the Pole Jan Hevelius gave them a name and called them "Little Leo". In 1922, at the I Assembly of the International Astronomical Union, the sky was divided into 88 sectors, according to the number of recognized constellations. Of these, about fifty were known to the ancient Greeks, and the names of the rest appeared later, when the stars of the Southern Hemisphere were discovered.
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Modern constellations are not figures of lions and unicorns: the sky was divided into conditional areas, between which precise boundaries were drawn; the brightest stars are designated by Greek letters (Alpha, Beta, Gamma …). The largest constellation by area is Hydra; it occupies 3.16 percent of the sky, the smallest being the Southern Cross.
There are also "unofficial" constellations - bright stars inside other constellations, which have their own name (sometimes they are called "asterisms") - for example, Orion's Belt inside the constellation Orion or the Northern Cross in the constellation Cygnus.
If the ancient astronomer had looked at the current constellation map, he would hardly have been able to understand something in it.
Over the centuries and millennia, the stars have greatly changed their position.
So, for example, the large star Sirius from the Constellation of the Dog changed its location by four diameters of the Moon, the star Arcturus in the constellation Bootes moved even further - by eight diameters of the Moon, and many even moved to another constellation. Any constellations are very arbitrary, they get luminaries from different areas of outer space, different distances from the Earth, different brightness, accidentally found themselves in the same area of the sky. Nothing more unites the stars of the same constellation, except that from the Earth we see them in one area of the sky.
In 1952, the American children's writer and amateur astronomer H. A. Ray invented new outlines for the constellations. He guessed to connect the most prominent stars with lines into simple shapes that corresponded to the name of the constellation. Sometimes Ray's schemes look strange or funny (for example, why in the constellation of Virgo the brightest star, Spica, was Virgo somewhere lower back?), But the figure of a girl in a short skirt is easier to remember and then make out in the sky than just a dozen dashes.
Ancient hunt
What people see in the sky is directly related to their material culture. So, many peoples see hunters and prey in the Big Dipper. In this constellation, next to the star Mizar, there is a tiny star - Alcor. Many tribes of North American Indians and peoples of Siberia believed that Alcor was a kettle for cooking meat.
The Iroquois said that one day six hunters went to a bear. One pretended to be sick, and the others carried him on a stretcher; behind there was a man with a bowler hat. When the tired hunters saw the bear, the sly man jumped off the stretcher and was the first to catch up with the beast. They all ended up in heaven; that is why in autumn the leaves turn red - bear blood drips from the sky.
Khanty, Kets and Evenks know similar stories in Siberia. The Mohawk Indians consider the Big Dipper's bucket to be a bear, and the stars in the “handle” of the bucket are hunters with a dog (Alcor). Alkor and many other peoples - Ukrainians, Estonians, Basques - are considered a dog or a wolf.
The ancient Greek astronomer Arat wrote that the Ursa Major and Ursa Minor - Gelika and Kinosura - were bears who fed the god Zeus with their milk. According to other versions, the Big Dipper was once the beloved of Zeus and her name was Callisto; Zeus turned her into a bear and lifted her to heaven.
Orion - a humpbacked hunter with a large sword
Three bright stars - Orion's belt - are easy to spot in the sky. Orion is known to almost all peoples of the world. Usually in this constellation they see not only the belt, but also the sword, shield and club of Orion.
Among the Greeks, Orion was a hunter who haunted the seven Pleiadic sisters, daughters of the titan Atlas and the nymph Pleione. Orion boasted that he could kill all the beasts on earth; frightened, Mother Earth sent a scorpion to him, which bit him and the hunter died. Orion, Scorpio, and the Pleiades were in the sky and became constellations.
The Australians believed Orion was the old man who persecuted and drowned seven sisters when they rejected him. But the Chukchi thought that Orion's belt was his back. Turns out Orion was married and his wife didn't like him sticking to the Pleiades. The wife hit Orion on the back with a board; after that he became hunchbacked. The Pleiades rejected the hunchback. He tried to kill them, but did not hit: the star Aldebaran is his arrow. By the way, both the Chukchi and the peoples of the Sahara believe that Orion's sword is not a sword at all, but a part of the body of a loving hunter.
In addition to Scorpio, thanks to Orion, among the constellations was the hunting Dog (constellations Canis Major and Minor), as well as the Hare: “Below both feet of Orion, the Hare rotates, driven day and night,” wrote Arat.
Animal Circle
The most famous constellations are considered to be 12 constellations located along the path along which the sun, moon and planets move. The Greeks called this orbit the zodiac, which literally means "animal circle".
The known Greco-Roman zodiac came from Babylonia, but in ancient times it was a little different: there was no Libra (this group of stars was considered the claws of Scorpio) and the zodiac circle began not with Aries, but with Cancer - on the days associated with this sign, it is summer solstice.
The ancient Sumerians called Aries "Mercenary" ("Batrak"). This rural worker began to be identified with the shepherd god Dumuzi, and it is not far from here to the ram-Aries. The Greeks believed that this is the same ram that had a magical skin - the golden fleece. As for Taurus, both the Sumerians and the Greeks saw only half a bull in the sky. According to the myth, the Sumerian hero Gilgamesh rejected the love of the goddess Inanna; she sent the monstrous bull Gugalanna on him. Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu killed the bull, and Enkidu tore off its hind legs. Therefore, only the front part of the bull was in the sky.
Two bright stars shine in the constellation Gemini: the ancient Greeks considered them twins - Castor and Pollux (in Latin Pollux). They were the brothers of Helen of Troy and the sons of Leda, and Zeus was the father of Polidevkus, and Castor was a mortal. When Castor died, Polideucus persuaded Zeus to allow his brother to return from the kingdom of the dead and grant him immortality. In ancient Mesopotamia, it was believed that Gemini was called Lugalgir (Great King) and Meslamtaea (He who returned from the underworld). Sometimes they were identified with the moon god Sin and the god of the underworld Nergal.
The constellation of Cancer was considered by the Greeks to be a monster cancer that attacked Hercules, in Babylon it was called the Crab, and the ancient Egyptians called it a sacred scarab. In the constellation Leo, the Babylonians distinguished Chest, Thigh and even Hind Paw (now this is the star Zawiyava, or Beta Virgo). In Greece, it was the Nemean lion that Hercules killed.
The Heavenly Virgin was considered Rhea, the wife of Kronos (Saturn) or the goddess Astrea - the protector of good and truth. In ancient Mesopotamia, the Virgin was called the Furrow.
The patroness of this constellation was the goddess Shala, who was portrayed with an ear in her hand: the star, which is now called Gamma Virgo, was considered by the Babylonians the Barley Ear. The Greeks did not know the constellation of Libra in antiquity, but the Babylonians had it; Libra in Mesopotamia was considered the patron of justice and called this constellation "Judgment".
Scorpio, the killer of Orion, was revered and feared in Mesopotamia. In the constellation Scorpio, the Babylonians distinguished the Tail, Sting, Head, Chest and even the Navel of Scorpio. In the constellation Sagittarius, the Greeks saw a centaur, and the Sumerians called Sagittarius Pabilsag - “Priest” or “Elder”. Pabilsag was one of the oldest Sumerian gods; the Assyrians depicted him as a winged centaur with two heads - a man and a lion, and two tails (a horse and a scorpion).
The Greeks considered Capricorn a harmless goat Amalthea, who fed Zeus with her milk. The constellation of Aquarius in antiquity was associated with the worldwide flood and with the hero Deucalion, who survived the catastrophe. Among the Sumerians, Aquarius was a good river god named Gula ("Giant"); then he was also called Lahmu ("Hairy"). He was portrayed as a naked hairy giant, from whose shoulders streams of water full of fish pour.
The Greeks depicted fishes in the form of two fish tied with a rope: they say that once the goddess of love Aphrodite and her son Eros walked along the river. The monster Typhon chased after them. Aphrodite and Eros jumped into the river, turned into fish and at the same time tied with a rope so as not to get lost. In Mesopotamia, it was believed that one fish in this constellation is flying (it was also called the Swallow Fish), and the other is the embodiment of the goddess of war Anunita.
How the goose was taken from the chanterelle
In the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries, Europeans first saw the sky of the southern hemisphere. Peter Keyser, navigator on the ship of the Dutch merchant de Houtman, saw and named the twelve southern constellations while sailing around the Cape of Good Hope in 1595-1596. Among them were Crane, Golden Fish, Fly, Peacock, Southern Triangle and others. In the northern hemisphere, several new constellations have also been identified - Chanterelle with Goose, Lizard, Lynx. Not all of these constellations received recognition: for example, Chanterelle became just Chanterelle (although the brightest star of Chanterelle is still called the Goose).
In the middle of the XVIII century. the Frenchman Nicolas Louis de Lacaille on the same Cape of Good Hope described seventeen more southern constellations. He chose the names mainly from the field of science and art: Telescope, Compass, Painter's Ease, Chemical Furnace. The large constellation "Ship Argo", which Greek sailors could see low above the horizon, Lacaille divided into Carina, Stern and Sails. He named another constellation Table Mountain - in honor of the mountain on the Cape Peninsula in South Africa, where he conducted astronomical observations.
Subsequently, these constellations were redrawn and renamed more than once. In the 18th century. In addition to just a Telescope, it was proposed to place in the sky the Herschel Telescope (with which Herschel discovered the planet Uranus) and the Small Herschel Telescope: this idea did not find support. Gradually, The Chemical Furnace became simply a Furnace, the Sculptor's Workshop became a Sculptor, and the Painter's Easel became a Painter. Printing House, Electric Machine, Wall Quadrant could not resist in the sky.
Of course, the inhabitants of the southern hemisphere had their own names for the constellations before the arrival of the Europeans. The Polynesians had the constellation of the Big Bird (Manuk): Sirius considered it as its head (or body), Canopus and Procyon as wings. The Southern Cross was called the triggerfish (Bubu). The Magellanic Clouds were well known in Polynesia, which the Europeans saw only in the XV-XVI centuries: in Tonga they were called Ma'afu lele "Flying fire" and Ma'afu toka "Standing fire", and in Fiji they called Matadrava ni sautu - " A hotbed of peace and abundance”.
Loyal stars
Scholars courtiers of the 17th-18th centuries came up with many names that could flatter the crowned heads. Edmund Halley in 1679 carved out of the long-suffering Ship Argo "Karl's Oak" (in his youth, Charles II was hiding in the oak leaves from the soldiers of Cromwell). In honor of another English king, George III, the Harp of George (part of the constellation Eridanus) was named. From the same Eridanus, the Prussian astronomer G. Kirch isolated the Brandenburg Scepter, and from several constellations - the Swords of the Elector of Saxony.
In memory of the Prussian king Frederick the Great, astronomer I. Bode named the constellation "Frederick's Regalia" or "Frederick's Glory", almost tearing off Andromeda's hand for this.
Sometimes, “by acquaintance”, less splendid persons also entered heaven. Thus, the French astronomer Lalande in 1799 proposed to single out the constellation Cats: “I love cats, I adore them. I hope they will forgive me if, after my sixty years of unremitting labors, I place one of them in heaven. Unfortunately, the Cat (as well as the Lone Thrush, Reindeer and Turtle) were not lucky: they were not included in the modern list of constellations either.