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Figures in the Sky The Universe in my pocket Figures in the sky Grażyna Stasińska No. 5 ES-­‐001 Paris Observatory This 17,000 year If you look at the sky on a clear old painting from the night, you will see that the stars Lascaux cave in seem to draw figures. France shows the stars of what is These figures, called constellations, now called the remain identical during the night Pleiades cluster. and do not change from one night tt This disc found in Germany to another. But the whole pa ern and thought to have been moves: like the Sun, constellations made almost 4000 years « rise » in the east and « set » in ago shows the Sun, the the West. The whole pattern moon and several stars, gradually shifts from one night to among which are the Pleiades. another but is found in the same place after exactly one year has `Starry Night passed. over the Rhône’ is a famous It is not surprising that ever since painting by the the oldest times, people of all great Dutch tt artist Vincent cultures have paid close a ention Van Gogh, to the sky, which served to orient where one can them both in space and in time. see the constellation of the Great Bear. This is how Astronomy started. 2 3 Orion: a famous constellation Since the earliest times people have given names to the constellations – mostly of animals or of gods – and built legends around them. For example, the constellation we know today as Orion was given this The stars of the name by the ancient Greeks . Many Orion constellation myths tell about Orion, a with imaginary lines handsome demigod. connecting them. Ancient Chinese astronomers knew Above: Orion as represented in 1687 by Orion as Shen, a great hunter or the Polish Astronomer warrior. Johannes Hevelius in his Sky Atlas. Well before that, the ancient Egyptians related this Right: a detail of the constellation with their god Osiris. Dunhuang Map, a 7th fi century Chinese star The rst people to name it were the chart, showing the Orion Sumerians; the name was Uru An- constellation. na, meaning ` Heaven’s light ’. 4 5 The Orion Orion « upside down » constellation seen from the southern Myths from other cultures are hemisphere, where it very different. looks upside down. For the Yollngu, an aborigenal Superimposed is the people from Australia, Orion is a representation of the canoe with three brothers who myth of an Australian went fishing. One of them ate a people associated to fish that was forbidden. In anger, this constellation. the Sun-woman created a The Old Man waterspout that carried the canoe is an with the three brothers into the indigenous sky. Brazilian name for a A very different story is told by constellation indians from Brazil: The constellation formed by a of the Old Man represents a man combination whose wife was interested in his of the Orion and Taurus brother. She killed her husband and ff constellations. cut o one of his legs. The gods felt sorry for him and transformed him (Image from into a constellation. the museum 7 of Amazonia.) 6 The sky in different seasons Stars can be seen only at night: during the day, they are outshone by the Sun. In the course of a year, the Earth revolves around the Sun so that different parts of the sky are seen in different seasons (see the drawing on the opposite page). The celestial sphere is an imaginary The Earth’s orbit around the Sun. sphere centered on Earth on which ff Di erent constellations are visible in the all the stars are projected and night sky during the year. seem to move. People standing in opposite The apparent path of the Sun on hemispheres of the celestial sphere is a circle that the Earth are crosses those constellations that upside down with respect to each are close to the plane of rotation other, and have of the Earth around the Sun. This inverted views of path is called the Zodiac. the same constellation. 8 9 Astronomy and Astrology The word zodiac is very well-known because of its relation with horoscopes, which pretend to predict your future according to the position of the Sun in the zodiac at the time of your birth. People writing horoscopes are 6th century mosaic representing the called Astrologers, not to be wheel of the zodiac with Greek motifs. confused with Astronomers! Astronomy is a science that describes and tries to understand the objects beyond the Earth’s atmosphere (planets, stars, galaxies). Astrology is not a science. It assumes that there is a link between the position of the Sun and planets and people’s lives. But there is no Chinese zodiac, used for divination, very reason for this to be true. On the different from the occidental zodiac. contrary, there is much evidence that 10 this is wrong. 11 Constellations are often represented on State Flags, proving the importance of Constellations and Astronomy the sky for mankind, even in modern times. A few thousand stars are visible to In 1927 a contest the naked eye. Over the years, they was held to choose have been catalogued in many sky the flag of Alaska. The atlases with beautiful illustrations winner was Benny depicting the constellations. Benson, a 13 year-old Alaskan boy. He Nowadays astronomers know how to wrote: ` The North measure the distances of stars. In Star is for the future a single constellation the stars are state of Alaska, the most northerly in the usually very far from one another Union. The Dipper is and are not physically linked. But for the Great Bear — we still like to recognize the symbolizing strength ’. constellations in the sky. With telescopes, we can find many The flag of Brazil. Its 27 stars represent more stars. In 2014, using the the 27 states and Isaac Newton Telescope on the are arranged in the Canary Islands, astronomers same pattern as in released a catalogue of 219 million the night sky over stars. Brazil. 12 13 The Twins, in a 1537 Persian copy Some famous of The Wonders of constellations Creation, written by al-Qazwini around 1250. The Twins The Lion, in the Uranometria of the German astronomer Johan Bayer (1603). Scorpio, in the Treaty of spheres by Andalo di The Lion Negro around 1330 . The Scorpion The Swan, in the Celestial Atlas of the English The Swan astronomer John Flamsteed (1729). The Universe in my pocket No. 5 This booklet was written in 2015 by Grażyna Stasińska from Paris Observatory (France) and revised by Stan Kurtz from the UNAMNr Radio1 Astronomy Institute in Morelia (Mexico). The cover image represents the "Emu in the sky", a constellation present in many aboriginal Australian cultures. It is not defined by stars but by the dark patches visible against the Milky Way background. To learn more about this series and about the topics presented in this booklet, please visit http://www.tuimp.org TUIMP Creative Commons .
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