constellations

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of what use are constellations in the world of today?

I mean, it's not like we use them for navigation anymore. We have GPS for that.

They were thought of many millennia ago - not very accurately, I might add and they may have had a use back then what with the mentality the stars were campfires in the distance or gods.

Take any given constellation; they look nothing like what they're supposed to be.

I think we should do away with the notion of constellations altogether.

Have you asked this before?

I get a distinct feeling of deja vu

If you wear shades at night they probably won't be able to offend you anymore?

Last edited by Moog on 02 Aug 2011, 10:42 am, edited 1 time in total.

I have. I don't remember getting a straight answer.

Why would we get rid of constellations? You do realize people still use them for navigation, right? The modern world with GPS is not the entire world.

Constellations are a great help in labeling the stars in the sky. For instance, if you want to know where to look for an object like Saturn, it's a lot easier to say "It's in the constellation Leo" than "It's close to right ascension 11 hours, declination +15 degrees."

A whole system of labeling stars is based on the constellations. Astronomers have used the constellations to divide the sky up into 88 portions like countries on a map. The stars within each boundary are labeled alpha, beta, gamma, delta, and so on through the Greek alphabet.

Overall, though, constellations make the sky a more familiar place. For most people, it's easier to remember characters and animals and stories than to refer to everything with coordinates, which is what we'd be left with without the constellations.

They are still handy for people out at night, not equipped with a GPS are a precision equatorial mount for their pocket telescopes. They are familiar "land marks" I still use the Big Dipper to find the Little Dipper and the North Star which can give me a pretty good read on directions at night when other terrestrial land marks are not readily visible.

In addition to that it puts me in touch with people thousands of years dead who loved the sky then, as much as I do now. Then or now, dead or alive, we were and are human beings in a timeless eternal bond.

ruveyn

Not true. I use some of the night sky in orienteering when I am backpacking/adventuring racing. Sure I have a map and compass but it is also great to navigate without the aide of these tools sometimes.



Agreed. The modern usage of the term constellation in astronomy doesn't actually imply just the specific shape you think of for, say the big dipper (Ursa Major), it is actually defined as an area in the celestial sphere, which contains the group of stars that make up the big dipper. You can think of constellations more like countries on a map than as abstract pictures... constellations are sort of the "geography of the sky".

"Saturn is in the constellation Leo" is comparable to saying "London is in England".

Since we have GPS now, I propose we blow up all the stars in the heavens, as they are just making a nuisance of themselves, making the sky look untidy.

Or we could just burn more fossil fuels and smog up the atmosphere a bit more.

I love constellations!

Astronomers use them to describe sections of the night sky.


People have mostly answered this, so I'll just tack on this.

GPS can be switched off. I don't mean that the batteries could run out on your GPS receiver, I mean that the U.S. military could put the system into encrypted mode and degrade the signals for non-military users. Or the satellites could be destroyed.


Not everything that is old is bad.


What do you mean by this?


I have the distinct impression you're just making this part up. I can't see why anyone would mistake stars for campfires.


The shapes are only a mnemonic. This isn't a problem.


What would we gain by doing that?

Why are you being absurd? We cannot "blow up stars". The stars will blow themselves up or become red giants when they run out of hydrogen to fuse.

ruveyn

Fun.

Just ignore them if they bother you so much.

I now have another thing to be grateful for when I'm feeling low: the fact that I don't stay up at night worrying about the existence of constellations.

The sun is a star and I'm not so comfortable with the idea of blowing up the sun!