Asterism (astronomy)

In astronomy, an asterism is a pattern of stars recognized in the Earth's night sky. It may be part of an official constellation or it may be composed of stars from more than one constellation.

Colloquial usage does not draw a sharp distinction between "constellation" in the sense of an asterism (pattern of stars) and "constellation" in the sense of an area of the sky surrounding an asterism. The modern system of constellations used in astronomy employs the latter concept. For example, the asterism known as the Big Dipper comprises the seven brightest stars in the IAU constellation that is called Ursa Major.

Like constellations, asterisms are in most cases composed of stars which, although visible in the same general area, are often located at very different distances from Earth.

Simple shapes composed of a few stars make asterisms easy to identify. Thus they are particularly useful to people who are familiarizing themselves with the night sky.

Background

Even before the dawn of civilization, it became common to clump various stars together in connect-the-dots stick-figure patterns. The grouping of stars into constellations is essentially arbitrary, and different cultures have had different constellations, although a few of the more obvious ones tend to recur frequently, e.g., Orion and Scorpius. Historically, without an "official" list, there was really no difference between a constellation and an asterism. Anyone could arrange and name a grouping which might or might not be generally accepted. Still, some of our own constellations go back at least as far as the Babylonians.

Astronomy

Astronomy, a natural science, is the study of celestial objects (such as stars, galaxies, planets, moons, asteroids, comets and nebulae) and processes (such as supernovae explosions, gamma ray bursts, and cosmic microwave background radiation), the physics, chemistry, and evolution of such objects and processes, and more generally all phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth. A related but distinct subject, physical cosmology, is concerned with studying the Universe as a whole.

Astronomy is one of the oldest sciences. The early civilizations in recorded history, such as the Babylonians, Greeks, Indians, Egyptians, Nubians, Iranians, Chinese, and Maya performed methodical observations of the night sky. However, the invention of the telescope was required before astronomy was able to develop into a modern science. Historically, astronomy has included disciplines as diverse as astrometry, celestial navigation, observational astronomy and the making of calendars, but professional astronomy is nowadays often considered to be synonymous with astrophysics.