What was the last constellation discovered and what year?

Answer 1

First of all what is a constellation? Is it just a recognisable pattern of bright stars, like Orion or The Big Dipper, or is it the area of the sky in which such patterns feature?

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.

Therein lies the difference between the ancient constellations' maps and the modern ones.

The 48 constellations identified by Ptolemy in his Almagest wrtten in Egypt in the 2nd Century AD (essentially those you could view from his latitude) were added to in modern times and reflected the work of a number of astronomers from the Northern Hemisphere who had spent gone "down under" cataloguing the stars visible from the southern hemisphere. And whose efforts were appended to the considerable work meantime going on cataloguing the northern hemisphere's stars.

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.

Edmund Halley (he of the Comet) on leaving Oxford, in 1676, visited the south Atlantic island of St. Helena with the intention of studying stars from the Southern Hemisphere. He returned to England in November 1678. In the following year he published Catalogus Stellarum Australium which included details of 341 southern stars. These additions to the star map earned him comparison with Tycho Brahe.

In 1725 the Astronomer Royal John Flamsteed (who Halley later succeeded) published his Historia Coelestis Britannica was published. This contained Flamsteed's observations, and included a catalogue of almost 3,000 stars to much greater accuracy than any prior work. This was considered the first significant contribution of the Greenwich Observatory of which he was the Director.

Another such northern astronomer who studied the southern skies was Norman Robert Pogson (March 23, 1829 – June 23, 1891) born at Nottingham, England. In 1860 he travelled to Madras, India, becoming the government astronomer. At the Madras Observatory he produced the Madras Catalogue of 11,015 stars. He also discovered five asteroids and six variable stars. And became well-known for systematising Hipparchus' method of assigning star magnitudes.

The constellation boundaries were drawn up by Eugène Delporte in 1930, and he drew them along vertical and horizontal lines of right ascension and declination. However, he did so for the epoch B1875.0, the era when Benjamin A. Gould made the proposal on which Delporte based his work. The consequence of the early date is that due to precession of the equinoxes, the borders on a modern star map (eg, for epoch J2000) are already somewhat skewed and no longer perfectly vertical or horizontal. This skew will increase over the years and centuries to come.

The 88 modern Constellations

Andromeda • Antlia • Apus • Aquarius • Aquila • Ara • Aries • Auriga • Boötes • Caelum • Camelopardalis • Cancer • Canes Venatici • Canis Major • Canis Minor • Capricornus • Carina • Cassiopeia • Centaurus • Cepheus • Cetus • Chamaeleon • Circinus • Columba • Coma Berenices • Corona Australis • Corona Borealis • Corvus • Crater • Crux • Cygnus • Delphinus • Dorado • Draco • Equuleus • Eridanus • Fornax • Gemini • Grus • Hercules • Horologium • Hydra • Hydrus • Indus • Lacerta • Leo • Leo Minor • Lepus • Libra • Lupus • Lynx • Lyra • Mensa • Microscopium • Monoceros • Musca • Norma • Octans • Ophiuchus • Orion • Pavo • Pegasus • Perseus • Phoenix • Pictor • Pisces • Piscis Austrinus • Puppis • Pyxis • Reticulum • Sagitta • Sagittarius • Scorpius • Sculptor • Scutum • Serpens • Sextans • Taurus • Telescopium • Triangulum • Triangulum Australe • Tucana • Ursa Major • Ursa Minor • Vela • Virgo • Volans • Vulpecula

Answer 2

A "constellation" is a figure invented by humans to identify a region of the sky. In general, the name of a constellation is taken from mythology. For example, Orion was a warrior or hunter and his figure can be imagined in the shape of the arrangement of stars in that region of the sky (Betelgeuse is a shoulder, three stars in a line form his belt, fainter stars and even a nebula form the sword, and so on).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_%28constellation%29

Astronomers use the constellations identified by the International Astronomical Union. The 88 (or 89) "official" constellations were identified by the IAU in 1922. Most were simply taken (or reformed) from a list of 48 published in Ptolemy's Almagest (most had been taken from the Babylonian in 8th century BC).

88 or 89? Serpens (the serpent) is in two separate parts: head (serpens caput) and tail (serpens cauda).

Others arrangements of stars may have names without being constellations; they are called asterisms. The Big Dipper is an asterism within the constellation Ursa Major (the Great Bear).

PS: Cetus was known for a long time. "In Mesopotamia, it was identified with the primordial cosmic female principle, the sea-monster Tiamat." (Wiki/Cetus).

Because the official names were given mostly by Europeans astronomers in 1922, the "newer" constellations would be the southern ones, many of which were created by the breakdown of the ship Corvus into the Sail, the Sextant, the Clock etc

Answer 3

A constellation is a group of heavenly bodies, stars or galaxies which when viewed from earth resemble an object or being in the night sky. They are not discovered, they are simply named and agreed upon by mankind from ancient civilizations to facilitate seasonal time and navigation. Are you confusing constellation with galaxy?

Answer 4

Constellations are not discovered, they are imaginary connection of stars to loosely form familiar shapes. Most of the names we have for them are derived from Greek. They (including Cetus) have been around for thousands of years.

Answer 5

Constellations were NOT discovered! They were formed from the fertile imaginations of early arabic astronomers who gave star formations names. Try it yourself. Lie down and look at the stars. You will soon see that they form certain shapes of your own imaginings.

Answer 6

Betcha the are ones being identified on a nearly daily basis. But I'm no astronomer.

Answer 7

year: 2003 . . . . "CETUS" is the constellation