Who invented constellations?

Question

does the person have a name?

Answer 1

The current list recognised in the West and by the IAU is based on those listed by Claudius Ptolemy, Greek-speaking mathematician, geographer, astronomer, and astrologer who lived in the Hellenistic culture of Roman Egypt. He may have been a Hellenized Egyptian, but he was probably of Greek ancestry, although no description of his family background or physical appearance exists, though it is likely he was born in Egypt, probably in or near Alexandria.

Greek astronomy was built on Mesopotamian foundations. They defined the Zodiac and at least another 18 constellations taken over or adapted by the Greeks:

The earliest direct evidence for the constellations comes from inscribed stones and clay writing tablets dug up in Mesopotamia (within modern Iraq)... It appears that the bulk of the Mesopotamian constellations were created within a relatively short interval from around 1300 to 1000 B.C...

The Mesopotamian groupings turn up in many of the classical Greek constellations. The stars of the Greek Capricorn and Gemini, for example, were known to the Assyrians by similar names - the Goat-Fish and the Great Twins. A total of 20 constellations are straight copies. Another 10 have the same stars but different names. The Assyrian Hired Man and the Swallow, for instance, were renamed Aries and Pisces. (The Origin of the Greek Constellations, by Bradley E. Schaefer. Scientific American, November 2006.)

In more recent times, Ptolemy's list has been added to in order to fill gaps between Ptolemy's patterns. The Greeks considered the sky as including both constellations and dim spaces between. But Renaissance star catalogs by Johann Bayer and John Flamsteed required every star to be in a constellation, and the number of visible stars in a constellation to be manageably small.

The constellations around the South Pole were not observable by the Greeks. Twelve were created by Dutch navigators Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman in the sixteenth century and first cataloged by Johann Bayer. Several more were created by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in his posthumous Coelum Australe Stelliferum, published in 1763.

Other proposed constellations didn't make the cut, most notably Quadrans Muralis (now part of Boötes) for which the Quadrantid meteors are named. Also the ancient constellation Argo Navis was so big that it was broken up into several different constellations, for the convenience of stellar cartographers. (See also Former constellations)

--> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation#History_of_the_constellations

Answer 2

John Q. Constellation

Answer 3

Constellation was not discovered, it was invented. It was the ancient greek and egyptian astronomers who invented constellations . Remember, constellation came from the imagination of us human beings. The earliest record of the first constellation goes back to 5000 years to ancient Mesopotamia. There are 88 official constellations on the first star chart.

Answer 4

Hi.
It's impossible to know who was the first to organize visible starts into constellation patterns, but the oldest known groupings are to be found in Mesopotamia, in cuneiform texts written in Akkadian and Sumerian. I will cite one example, that of the Pleiades. This group has an important role in incantatory literature as "the daughters of An (=the heavens)." Another example is to be found in the nature of the constellation Scorpio, which to this day reatins several attributes that are traceable at least as far back as cuneiform astronomical texts. Cf., among others, "Le signe zodiacal du scorpion" by Luigi Aurigemma (in this book is also a useable bibliography of other books on the early history of this particular sign, and thus this subject in general.)

Answer 5

No one "invented" them. Somewhere probably even before recorded history, people recognized star groupings and associated various things with their positions. They could probably tell when the warmer weather was coming for the year. Remember - no video games or cell phones so they paid close attention to things around them.

Later on people started giving them names and putting folklore tales around them.

Answer 6

Pirates. Edward Teach.

Answer 7

Depending on you who ask..either nature or God.
The ancients gave the points of lights in the dark sky
names and purposes which have been passed down through
the ages. Long ago travelers gave the stars stories to
explain their existence. Theologians gave the stars
religion and a place in history. Singers gave the stars
a voice and a warm place in our hearts.

Answer 8

Hi. They were named long ago, probably by shepherds in the dark of night. We all tend to make patterns into objects. Just look at the 'smiley' face icon in Y!A.

Answer 9

They passed through the hands of the ancient Greeks, who overlaid them with their legends and codified them in story and verse. During Roman times they were assigned Latin names.

Answer 10

DanE is right. They were made up by different groups of people over the centuries. No one person is responsible.