have any new constellations been found or named in the last five years?

Answer 1

Constellations are an artifact - that means they are not real collections of stars. They are simply shapes that a group of otherwise unrelated stars make that appear to form a shape that someone has imagined.

It is not different to you seeing a castle in a cloud. It is really meaningless, except in the imagination.

You could go out on a dark night and imagine your own shapes in the star groups. Yours would be as good as anyone's. the difference is that, in the Northern hemisphere at least, the constellation shapes were named by ancients, and we stick with them.

In the Southern Hemisphere a lot of new ones were named a few centruies ago simply because civilisation didn't go down there til a few hundred years ago. The Maori in New Zealand, the Aborigines in Australia, natives in South Africa and South America would have seen their own shapes in the sky - nothing like ours, but all the same stars.

I am not sure why people get this concept so wrong. The constellations are not really astronomy, in the scientific sense.

Answer 2

The old professor agrees with the previous answers, but would hasten to add there are other imaginary "pictures" in the stellar patterns...for example the "Teapot"of Sagittarius or "Big Dipper" of Ursa Major. These are newer names given to these patterns and we call them ASTERISMS. The older constellations remain intact for purposes of identification and locations in astronomy. Star names are based on the star's apparent magnitude and constellation....like Alpha Centauri.

Answer 3

no ; are 88 constellations

Answer 4

No

If you had said "five hundred years" now that would have been interesting.