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Comparing constellations across cultures

Nature Astronomy volume 6, pages 406–409 (2022)Cite this article

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Cultural astronomy reveals ways in which perception and culture have shaped the interpretation of the night sky.

John Herschel referred to the Western constellations as “uncouth figures and outlines of men and monsters” and claimed that astronomers “treat them lightly, or altogether disregard them, except for briefly naming remarkable stars, as α Leonis, β Scorpii, &c. &c., by letters of the Greek alphabet attached to them”1. His contemporary Thomas Dick was even more scathing, and wrote that these “fantastical groups may comport with the degrading arts of the astrologer” but are “not only incompetent to the purposes, but completely repugnant to the noble elevation of modern astronomical science”2.

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Fig. 1: Common star groups across cultures compared with model predictions.
Fig. 2: Three constellation figures that include the brightest stars of Corona Borealis (CrB).

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Acknowledgements

We thank D. Bucur for helpful comments on the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, Melbourne, Australia

    Charles Kemp, Daniel R. Little & Simon J. Cropper

  2. School of Physics, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

    Duane W. Hamacher

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  1. Charles Kemp
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Correspondence to Charles Kemp.

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Kemp, C., Hamacher, D.W., Little, D.R. et al. Comparing constellations across cultures. Nat Astron 6, 406–409 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-022-01642-x

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