constellations

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can someone explain the current value or importance of constellations please?

They used to use them as signposts and for navigation in the past which is all fine and good but what current, present-day use do they serve?

I mean, to us in the here and now, they're just patterns that, if viewed from even a light year away in any direction would change its shape completely. And they constellations don't resemble what they're supposed to be. Ursa Major, for example doesn't look like a bear, Cancer doesn't look like a crab and so on. We don't need them to navigate or point the way. We know what stars are and no longer revere them as gods or as distant campfires.

So, why teach kids about constellations any more?

Hi MasterJedi,

I don't know, but I believe they are still used in Astronomy. Every part of the sky is designated as being in a particular constellation and stars within each constellation are numbered according to their brightness, or at least that's what I seem to remember from my star guide book. But I know of no good reason as to why they break up the sky according to the traditional constellations instead of something else, like a grid.

good answer. thank you

The names has no physical basis, in the beginning it was just human imagination that gave name to the constellations. Various cultures had different names, based on their mythology or history.

Usually the brightest star in a constellation is denoted by alpha, and then beta and so on, like alpha Cygnus. There are exceptions to this, however.

Astronomy is very much about tradition, and they don't redo terms or equations only to simplify. One example is the magnitude of objects, for which an object is very bright has a very low magnitude and not the other way around (compare galaxies with stars, galaxies has much lower magnitude than stars, but are way brighter). I had another example in mind but can't quite remember it right now, but several equations in the astronomy and astrophysics field is based on older theories and systems and isn't really changed today, which makes things a little harder. When I studied astrophysics, I was thinking that a lot of things could be changed and made simpler. My teacher agreed, but said it was much about tradition.

So tradition could well be the key answer here.

Constellations are handy for finding your way around the night sky. I used to do amateur astronomy and my star charts tended to be split by constellation. First you find the major stars in a constellation and from there you can home in on the less bright objects in relation to the stars that make up the constellation. In other words constellations are just handy reference points or signposts.