The constellations and other sky divisions
Recognition of the constellations can be traced to early civilization. The oldest astronomical cuneiform texts, from the second half of the 2nd millennium bce, record the Sumerian names of the constellations still known as the lion, the bull, and the scorpion. Drawings of these astronomical animals appear on Babylonian boundary stones of the same period, and the earlier occurrence of these motifs on prehistoric seals, Sumerian vases, and gaming boards suggests that they may have originated as early as 4000 bce. In China a handful of configurations show similarity to those of the West, including the scorpion, the lion, the hunter (Orion), and the northern dipper, suggesting the possibility of a very old common tradition for a few groups but otherwise almost complete independence.
Greek literature reflects the impact of the stars on the life of an agricultural and seafaring people. Homer (c. 9th century bce) records several constellations by the names used today, and the first mention of circumpolar stars is in the Odyssey. Odysseus is
Gazing with fixed eye on the Pleiades,
Boötes setting late and the Great Bear,
By others called the Wain, which wheeling round,
Looks ever toward Orion and alone
Dips not into the waters of the deep.
In England the Great Bear (Ursa Major), or Big Dipper, was still called Charles’s Wain (or Wagon) in Shakespeare’s day:
An’t be not four by
The day I’ll be hanged; Charles’ Wain is over
The new chimney and yet our horse not pack’d.
This form derives from Charlemagne and, according to The Oxford English Dictionary, apparently from a verbal association of the name of the bright nearby Arcturus with Arturus, or Arthur, and the legendary association of Arthur and Charlemagne.
the earliest systematic account of the constellations is contained in the Phaenomena of Aratus, a poet of the 3rd century bce, who described 43 constellations and named five individual stars. Cicero recorded that
The first Hellenic globe of the sky was made by Thales of Miletus, having fallen into a ditch or well while star-gazing. Afterwards Eudoxos of Cnidus traced on its surface the stars that appear in the sky; and…many years after, borrowing from Eudoxos this beautiful design and representation, Aratos had illustrated it in his verses, not by any science of astronomy, but by the ornament of poetical description.
De republica, I, 14
By far the most important list of stars and constellations still extant from antiquity appears in the Almagest of Ptolemy (flourished 2nd century ce). It contains ecliptic coordinates and magnitudes (measures of brightness) for 1,022 stars, grouped into 48 constellations. Numerous writers have stated that Ptolemy simply borrowed his material from a now-lost catalog of Hipparchus compiled in 129 bce. A critical analysis of the Hipparchian fragments still extant, including his commentary on the Phaenomena of Aratus, indicates that (1) the catalog of Hipparchus did not include more than 850 stars and (2) Ptolemy most likely obtained new coordinates for even those 850 stars. The evidence suggests that Ptolemy, who for over a century has been considered a mere compilator, should be placed among the first-rank astronomical observers of all ages.
Nevertheless, Ptolemy’s star list presents a curious puzzle. The southernmost heavens, invisible at the latitude of Alexandria, naturally went unobserved. On one side of the sky near this southern horizon, he tabulated the bright stars of the Southern Cross (although not as a separate constellation) and of Centaurus, but on the opposite side a large area including the first-magnitude star Achernar had been left unrecorded. Because of precession, before 2000 bce this region would have been invisible from Mesopotamia. Perhaps neither Hipparchus nor Ptolemy considered that part of the heavens unnamed by their ancient predecessors. Ptolemy’s catalog of 1,022 stars remained authoritative until the Renaissance.
Ptolemy divided his stars into six brightness, or magnitude, classes. He listed 15 bright stars of the first magnitude but comparatively few of the faint, much more numerous but barely visible sixth magnitude at the other limit of his list. Al-Ṣūfī, a 10th-century Islamic astronomer, carried out the principal revision made to these magnitudes during the Middle Ages. Ulūgh Beg, grandson of the Mongol conqueror Timur, is the only known Oriental astronomer to reobserve the positions of Ptolemy’s stars. His catalog, put together in 1420–37, was not printed until 1665, by which time it had already been surpassed by European observations.
Constellations of the zodiac
The Mesopotamian arrangement of constellations has survived to the present day because it became the basis of a numerical reference scheme—the ecliptic, or zodiacal, system. This occurred about 450 bce, when the ecliptic was clearly recognized and divided into 12 equal signs of the zodiac. Most modern scholars take the zodiac as a Babylonian invention; the oldest record of the zodiacal signs as such is a cuneiform horoscope from 419 bce. However, as Greek sources attribute the discovery of the ecliptic to Oenopides in the latter part of the 5th century bce, a parallel development in both Greece and Babylon should not be excluded.
At the time the zodiac was established, it was probably necessary to invent at least one new constellation, Libra. Centuries later Ptolemy’s Almagest still described the stars of Libra with respect to the ancient figure of the scorpion.
The decans
Two other astronomical reference systems developed independently in early antiquity, the lunar mansions and the Egyptian decans. The decans are 36 star configurations circling the sky somewhat to the south of the ecliptic. They make their appearance in drawings and texts inside coffin lids of the 10th dynasty (about 2100 bce) and are shown on the tomb ceilings of Seti I (1318–04 bce) and of some of the Rameses in Thebes. The decans appear to have provided the basis for the division of the day into 24 hours.
Besides representing star configurations as decans, the Egyptians marked out about 25 constellations, such as crocodile, hippopotamus, lion, and a falcon-headed god. Their constellations can be divided into northern and southern groups, but the various representations are so discordant that only three constellations have been identified with certainty: Orion (depicted as Osiris), Sirius (a recumbent cow), and Ursa Major (foreleg or front part of a bull). The most famous Egyptian star map is a 1st-century-bce stone chart found in the temple at Dandarah and now in the Louvre. The Zodiac of Dandarah illustrates the Egyptian decans and constellations, but since it incorporates the Babylonian zodiac as well, many stars must be doubly represented, and the stone can hardly be considered an accurate mapping of the heavens.
Lunar mansions
Called hsiu in China and nakshatra in India, the lunar mansions are 28 divisions of the sky presumably selected as approximate “Moon stations” on successive nights. At least four quadrantal hsiu that divided the sky into quarters or quadrants were known in China in the 14th century bce, and 23 are mentioned in the Yüeh Ling, which may go back to 850 bce. In India a complete list of nakshatra are found in the Atharvaveda, providing evidence that the system was organized before 800 bce. The system of lunar mansions, however, may have a common origin even earlier in Mesopotamia.
Relationship of the bright stars and their constellations
Ancient peoples sometimes named individual bright stars rather than groups; sometimes the name of the group and its brightest star were synonymous—as in the case of the constellation Aquila and the star Altair (Alpha Aquilae), both names meaning “flying eagles”—or were used interchangeably as in the case of both the star Arcturus (Alpha Boötis, “bear watcher”) and the constellation Boötes (“plowman”). In the star list of the Almagest, Ptolemy cites only about a dozen stars by name, describing the others by their positions within the constellation figures. Most star names in current use have Arabic forms, but these are usually simply translations of Ptolemy’s descriptions; for example, Deneb, the name of the brightest star in the constellation Cygnus (Swan), means literally “tail” of the bird.
Ptolemy’s placement of the stars within apparently well-known figures indicates the earlier existence of star maps, probably globes. An example survives in the so-called Farnese Globe at Naples, the most famous astronomical artifact of antiquity. This huge marble globe, supported by a statue of Atlas, is generally considered to be a Roman copy of an earlier Greek original. It shows constellation figures but not individual stars, although the stars may have been painted on the stone.
A unique hemispherical celestial map, which furnishes a remarkable connecting link between the classical representation of the constellations and the later Islamic forms, is painted in the dome of a bathhouse at Quṣayr ʿAmra, an Arab palace built in Jordan about 715 ce. The surviving fragments of the fresco show parts of 37 constellations and about 400 stars.
Circumstantial evidence suggests that a flat representation of the sky, in the form of a planisphere using a stereographic projection, had come into use by the beginning of the present era. This provided the basis for the astrolabe, the earliest remaining examples of which date from the 9th century ce. The open metalwork of the top moving plate (called a spider or rete) of an astrolabe is essentially a star map, and these instruments together with associated manuscript lists provide the basic documentation for Arabic star names.
If astrolabes are excluded, the oldest existing portable star map from any civilization is the Chinese Tunhuang manuscript in the British Museum, dating from about 940 ce. A Latin document of about the same age, also in the British Museum, shows a planisphere to illustrate the Phainomena of Aratus, without, however, indicating individual stars. The oldest illuminated Islamic astronomical manuscript, a 1009–10 ce copy of al-Ṣūfī’s book on the fixed stars, shows individual constellations, including stars.
The earliest known western maps of the skies of the Northern and Southern hemispheres with both stars and constellation figures date from 1440; preserved in Vienna, they may have been based on two now-lost charts from 1425 once owned by the German astronomer and mathematician Regiomontanus. In 1515 the noted German painter Albrecht Dürer drew the first printed star maps, a pair of beautiful planispheres closely patterned on the Vienna manuscripts. Dürer and his collaborators numbered the stars on the charts according to the order in Ptolemy’s list, a nomenclature that gained limited currency in the 16th century. The first book of printed star charts, De le stelle fisse (1540) of the Italian Alessandro Piccolomini, introduced a lettering system for the stars; although frequently reprinted, application of its nomenclature did not spread.
New constellations: 16th–20th century
Star charts contained only the 48 constellations tabulated by Ptolemy until the end of the 16th century. Then Pieter Dircksz Keyser, a navigator who joined the first Dutch expedition to the East Indies in 1595, added 12 new constellations in the southern skies, named in part after exotic birds such as the toucan, the peacock, and the phoenix.
The southern constellations were introduced in 1601 on a celestial globe by J. Hondius and in 1603 on the globe of Willem Blaeu and on a single plate in the Uranometria of Johann Bayer. The Uranometria, the first serious star atlas, has a plate for each of the 48 traditional figures. Its scientific integrity rests on Tycho Brahe’s newly determined stellar positions and magnitudes (see below Modern star maps and catalogs).
In his Uranographia of 1687, the German astronomer Johannes Hevelius devised seven new constellations visible from mid-northern latitudes that are still accepted, including Sextans (the sextant), named for one of his own astronomical instruments. Fourteen additional southern constellations were formed by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille after his visit to the Cape of Good Hope in 1750. They appeared in the Memoires of the Académie Royale des Sciences for 1752 (published in 1756). All other attempts to invent constellations have failed to win acceptance.
The classic atlases of Bayer and Hevelius as well as John Flamsteed’s Atlas Coelestis (1729) showed only the brighter naked-eye stars. Johann Elert Bode’s Uranographia of 1801 was the first reasonably complete depiction of the stars visible to the unaided eye. It included an early use of constellation boundaries, a concept accepted and refined by 19th-century cartographers. Friedrich W.A. Argelander’s Uranometria Nova (1843) and Benjamin A. Gould’s Uranometria Argentina (1877–79) standardized the list of constellations as they are known today. They divided Ptolemy’s largest constellation, Argo Navis (the ship), into four parts: Vela (the sail), Pyxis (the compass), Puppis (the stern), and Carina (the keel).
The definitive list of 88 constellations was established in 1930 under the authority of the International Astronomical Union. Its rectilinear constellation boundaries preserve the traditional arrangements of the naked-eye stars. The smallest of the constellations, Equuleus (“the Little Horse”) and Crux (“the [Southern] Cross”), nestle against constellations that are more than 10 times larger, Pegasus and Centaurus, respectively. The standard boundaries define an unambiguous constellation for each star.