Ordinary Meeting with Andrew James (ASNSW)

Guest Speaker: Andrew James (ASNSW)

Title: Divisions and Areas of the Constellations

Abstract: Of all the eighty-eight modern constellations, one of the first things we note on star charts is the large variety and complexity of their shapes and sizes.

When the earliest observers looked at the night sky, they imagined they saw familiar patterns or groups of stars related to what they experienced in their own adopted cultural mythology or daily living. As humans started to live together in villages, towns and cities, these encircled patterns in the sky were passed down as stories through the generations and became constellations.

However, the constellation’s stars and names they chose differed between each culture or country. The drawn encircled boundaries of these constellations were only random, and even a shared belief in an agreed constellation would assign different stars to them.

This issue was not problematic until astronomers became interested in understanding the true nature of stars through observation and science. By the early 1830s, it became necessary to establish universal agreement on the identification and placement of each assigned constellation star.

Another century was to pass before the constellation boundaries were formally addressed and solved.

This talk discusses the evolution and the IAU history and how the bottom constellations formulated. I'll conclude with some of the work that I've been looking at regarding the calculation of areas and how it applies to how we view the sky.

Biography: Andrew James is a very long-standing member of ASNSW. He has been a major contributor to Universe for many years.  His "Deep Southern Planetaries" was one of the best series of articles our journal has ever published. His knowledge of astronomical history and Australian astronomical history are unmatched.