Constellations are named after

Answer 1

These are different questions. The constellations were created from the imaginations of the people who observed the stars. Most of our "standard" northern hemisphere constellations were from Greek or Roman mythology.

Many of the Southern Hemisphere constellations were named by European sailors and navigators as they first sailed into southern waters. Note the nautical themed constellation names like "Sextans" and "Telescopium" and "Cetus", the whale.

The International Astronomical Union standardized all of the constellations, and assigned every visible star to one, and ONLY one, constellation.

Answer 2

The International Astronomical Union formalized the assignments of every star to one, and only one, constellation. (This was done by essentially making a map of the sky and saying "everything in this area is in the constellation of whatever, even if it has nothing whatsoever to do with the traditional pattern making up the constellation of whatever and/or is too faint to see.") They also standardized the 88 "official" constellations.

However, their work was more in the way of clarifying the constellations that have existed for two thousand years. And since a majority of the IAU scientists were (at the time) drawn from European societies, the Roman and Greek constellations were prevalent as opposed to Oriental or Arabic names.

The names of stars within a constellation comes from two sources: some (usually the very brightest) stars have "traditional" names, like Betelgeuse or Rigel. Somewhat more stars have Bayer (Alpha Orionis and Beta Orionis) and/or Flamsteed (58 Orionis or 19 Orionis) designations. There are also various star catalogs that name or number stars according to their own scheme. The usual order of precedence is that if a star has a Bayer designation, that's what it's called; if it doesn't, but it does have a Flamsteed designation, that's what it's called; if it has neither, then it's called by whatever catalog designation it does have (for example, if it's listed in Uranometria Argentina by Gould, it might be called by its Gould designation in that catalog). If the traditional name is extremely well known, it may be usually called that in preference to (or in addition to) the Bayer designation.

Incidentally, all the designations above refer to the same pair of stars.

"Bayer" and "Flamsteed" are the last names of the two astronomers who actually carried out the painstaking work of assigning those designations to the stars. (Flamsteed didn't actually number the stars; instead he published a catalog of 2554 known stars, grouped by the constellation in which they appear and ordered by their right ascension. The number represents the order in which it appeared in the catalog. Flamsteed only listed the stars he could see from Britain, so many southern hemisphere stars do not have Flamsteed designations.)

Answer 3

The ancient Babylonians charted many of the stars visible to the naked eye and assigned stars to various groupings (constellations). The Greeks, notably Ptolemy, recorded lists of these formations. Many of Ptolemy's constellations are retained in the modern configuration. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) divided the sky into 88 specific regions for the 88 constellations in 1922, assigning Latin names for the traditional ones, except for those named for Greek mythological figures. The current sky map is based mostly on the work of Benjamin Gould in 1895 and Eugene Delporte in 1930.

Answer 4

A Greek astronomer, Ptolomeus, or Ptolemy, is mainly responsible for giving many stars and constellations Greek markings.

Comment: I think the correct answer is the German astronomer called Johann Bayer.

Answer 5

In the northern hemisphere and along the ecliptic, most of the constellations were taken from Greek or Roman mythology, or from other (primarily European) folk legends. For example, the 12 "signs of the zodiac", more-or-less equally spread around the ecliptic, are mostly Roman. Many were real or imaginary animals or heroes, such as Aries (the Ram), Draco (the Dragon) or Orion the Hunter.

In the southern hemisphere, the early European sailors and navigators imagined shapes in the stars that were relevant to their own lives; for example, Telescopium, Octans, Sextans, and Cetus (the Whale).

The International Astronomical Union formalized the layout of the 88 official constellations.

Answer 6

I believe that the Greeks were the ones who had recognized and named many of the constellations. The Greeks along with others such as Egyptians, & the Babylonians.The names used by the Greeks, Egyptians, & other people were translated into Latin because Latin was considered to be the language of learning. Most of the names that were given to the constellations were ones of men, women and animals because that is what they appeared to resemble to the observer. One constellation I am a little familiar is Orion. The Egyptians saw this constellation as their god Osiris holding the star Aldebaran

Answer 7

constellations are named after animals in the greek myth

Answer 8

most of the constellations were named after mythologies.

Answer 9

Constellations are named after greek myths and legeneds

Answer 10

Most star names were given to the stars by ancient Arabic astronomers.