STARS AND CONSTELLATIONS

* What are stars?

* What are Constellations?

STARS

Stars are luminous hot balls of plasma with their own gravitational force. They appear to us as beautiful tiny illuminated dots in the sky at night. There are basically a few stars commonly known to us , eg. The Sun, the pole star etc. But that is just two among trillions or infinite of them. Our astronomers have been studying on multiple aspects of stars which also include shooting stars as well. There is an entire list of important stars comprehended in Star Catalogue which includes proper identification of stars as well as their features. 

When keen to know about stars there are multiple aspects we can consider apart from its distance, spherical aspects and masses. Humans are yet now considered as the most intelligent being and are thriving with the research on astronomical aspects but when we revisit the history, there are multiple controversial impressions of astronomy - human connection. Many civilisations have been using the astral signs and positions ( Constellations) to navigate through unknown lands and have flourished as well as diminished to earth. Astral aspects like shooting stars were a part of religious believes and were considered bad omens by many civilisations. Leading on the path of stars, civilisations started worshipping what they were afraid of or were incapable of understanding; often powerful stars like Sun was worshipped and even some Constellations like 'the Orion' were worshipped, on the other hand falling stars or shooting stars were often considered bad omen and that they were followed by plague, famine and doom. So are we taken to the bigger group of stars, so called 'Constellations'.

CONSTELLATIONS

Constellations are a group of stars in a particular celestial sphere which are often named on the basis of anecdotes and myths forwarded by many historic civilisations. The obvious question related to constellation is the total number constellation in our universe. But the answer needs to be limited to only those which are officially identified and recognised i.e. eighty eight constellations. 

The word constellation is derived from the Latin word Constellatio, which means “Set of Stars”. The locating and naming process of such group of stars is known as  “Asterism”. This can be traced back to the time before “Before Christ” period. 

But again the question remains that how were they able to do it?

Stay tuned for more updates!!!!

-Ansu P Kumar