Have you ever looked up at the night sky and seen all the twinkling stars? People have been connecting these stars with imaginary lines to create pictures of animals and characters for a long time. These pictures are called constellations. Some constellations, like Orion, look like a person. But others, like a big rectangle, might make you wonder how they represent a horse!
That’s a great question! Many people have seen or heard of constellations like the Big Dipper. The Big Dipper is a group of seven bright stars that look like a giant spoon or ladle. Scientists call this group Ursa Major, which means the Big Bear. They imagine the stars as the bear’s legs, head, and tail. But it doesn’t look much like a bear, does it?
To find out who created these constellations, we need to travel back in time. Long ago, before electric lights, nights were very dark. People would sit outside by a fire and look up at the stars. They used the stars to tell stories. For example, the ancient Greeks told a story about Callisto, who was turned into a bear by the god Zeus. Zeus then tossed her into the sky, and that’s why they thought those stars were a bear.
Not everyone sees the same pictures in the stars. The Inuit people from northern North America saw the same stars as the Greeks but imagined them as a caribou, an important animal to them. The ancient Egyptians saw the stars of Orion differently too. They imagined the stars as a person, but with a different shape than the Greeks did.
Since there’s no one right way to connect the stars, you can make up your own constellations! Instead of a person, you could connect the stars to look like an ice cream cone or anything else you like. Scientists have agreed on certain constellations to help them map the sky. This helps them tell each other where to find things like new planets.
No single person created the constellations. People from all over the world made up different stories and pictures with the stars. If you look at the stars tonight, you can imagine the Big Dipper as a spoon, a caribou, or even a frying pan. It’s all up to your imagination!
Thanks for exploring the stars with me! Remember, there are mysteries all around us. Stay curious and keep looking up at the night sky!
Create Your Own Star Story: Go outside on a clear night with a family member and look up at the stars. Choose a group of stars and imagine what picture they could form. Draw your constellation on paper and give it a name. Write a short story about how your constellation came to be in the sky. Share your story with your classmates or family.
Star Map Exploration: Use a simple star map or a constellation app with the help of an adult to find well-known constellations like Orion or the Big Dipper. Try to spot them in the night sky. Notice how they look different from the pictures you see in books. Discuss with a friend or family member why you think people from different cultures saw different shapes in the same stars.
Constellation Craft: Gather some black construction paper, white chalk, and star stickers. Use the stickers to create a constellation on the paper. Connect the stars with chalk lines to form a picture. Think about what your constellation could represent and explain your creation to someone at home. How does your constellation help you remember a story or an animal?
Sure! Here’s a sanitized version of the transcript:
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(ringing) – Hi, it’s Doug. The constellations. If you look up at the stars at night, you might know that people connect imaginary lines between the stars to imagine different animals and characters. They create various apps that can help you see these. Some constellations, like the stars of Orion, really do look like the outline of a person. Others, like this big rectangle, might leave you wondering how it’s supposed to represent a horse.
Someone named Madelyn has a question about all of this. Let’s give her a call now. (ringing) – Hi, Doug. – Hi, Madelyn. – I have a question for you. Who created the constellations? – Oh, that’s a great question. Maybe you’ve seen some constellations yourself or at least have heard of them. The Big Dipper is a popular one, the seven bright stars that are imagined to be a giant spoon or ladle. Officially, scientists consider this one to be Ursa Major, the Big Bear, with these stars representing the bear’s legs, this group as the bear’s head, and these three stars as the bear’s tail.
Well, that’s a pretty unusual-looking bear. Here’s a group of stars you should be able to see in the summer and fall evenings, at least if you live in the Northern Hemisphere. Before I tell you its name, what do you think it looks like if you were to draw imaginary lines between some of the stars? Now would be a good time to pause the video and discuss.
Okay, you ready? Some people connect these stars this way and imagine that it’s a dolphin. This is called the constellation Delphinus, the Dolphin. What do you think about that? Did you imagine a dolphin? I’m guessing maybe not. So how do people come up with this? Who decided that this is a dolphin, this is a bear, and so on?
To answer that question, we have to go back in time, a time long before there were electric light bulbs in people’s homes, a time when nighttime meant complete darkness. On warm nights, people would sit outside by the fire, looking up at the night sky and using it as a way of telling stories. For example, the people of ancient Greece loved to tell the story of a person named Callisto, who had been turned into a bear by their god Zeus in order to protect her from her enemies. The story goes that that wasn’t enough to protect her. So Zeus grabbed Callisto by her bear tail and tossed her up into the sky, causing her tail to become stretched.
So you can see at least why the ancient Greeks considered these stars to be a bear, even though bears don’t have long tails. It was part of their storytelling, and it’s why these stars are still often called Ursa Major, which means the Big Bear. Still, if some of these constellations don’t make a lot of sense to you, you’re not alone. Because constellations are imaginary lines that we connect between stars, there’s no one right way to connect them.
For example, the Inuit people of northern North America look up at the same stars that the ancient Greeks saw, but they connect them in different ways. When they look at the stars of Ursa Major, they didn’t imagine them as a bear, but instead as a caribou, an animal that’s incredibly important to them. Or take Orion, a group of stars often connected to form the outline of a person.
Now, to the ancient Greeks, who named him Orion, these three stars are his belt, these are his shoulders, and here’s his feet. But to the ancient Egyptians, who lived further south of the Greeks, Orion appears higher in the sky. They imagined a person too, but instead of these being his feet, they considered these stars his shoulders, and the stars of his belt, they imagined to be the bottom of his hat.
Because there’s no one right way to connect the stars, you can even make up your own constellations if you wanted to. Like instead of connecting some of these stars to draw a person, you could connect them differently and pretend it’s an ice cream cone. That said, I mentioned earlier that scientists do have certain official ways that they like to connect the lines. That’s because once telescopes were invented, scientists realized that constellations could be really helpful boundaries for the sky, like a way of creating a map of the sky.
For example, if a scientist finds a new planet, they need to be able to tell other scientists where to look to find it. If they all agree to use the same constellations, that way they can all know to look in the same places. They’ve divided the entire sky up into 88 constellations, and about half of those are the ones created by the ancient Greeks.
So in summary, no one person created the constellations. Instead, ancient people from different places in the world had different ways of connecting the stars based on stories they wanted to tell. If you go outside tonight, you can imagine the stars of the Big Dipper as a giant spoon, a caribou, or even a frying pan. It’s totally up to you.
That’s all for this week’s question. Thanks, Madelyn, for asking it. Now, for the next episode, I reached into my question jar and picked out three questions sent into us that I’m thinking about answering next. When this video is done playing, you’ll get to vote on one. You can choose from: why don’t people eat ostrich eggs, what country has the largest population, or who invented the calculator? So submit your vote when the video is over. I want to hear from all of you watching. There are mysteries all around us. Stay curious, and see you next week.
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