Where does the name of Taurus the constellation come from?

Answer 1

The constellations got their names from a civillizations mythological stand point. Some examples. Aquarius Hercules Perseus Pegasus These are all Greek in origin, Aquarius was the water bearer to the gods, or Ganymede, Pegasus was the winged horse of Zeus, Hercules was a hero, and Perseus was a hero.

Answer 2

Our imagination! Every culture on Earth looked up at the vast expanse of the night sky and tried to make sense of what they saw. The way we all could feel a kinship with the night sky was to create patterns in the stars which made sense to what we experience in our own lives. So the ancient Chinese saw the patterns in the stars as a representation of their empire on Earth, complete with their emperor, his court and all the peoples of their land. The Greeks took their heroes, legends and tales and put those ideas in the stars we see above us every night. In 1930, the International Astronomical Union officially recognized 88 constellations in the sky. Most of those were passed down from Greeks and Romans. Many constellations only seen from the Southern Hemisphere which the Greeks did not know, were named by the European explorers who first charted the southern skies in the 16th and 17th century. Many of those constellations reflect what was important to their world at the time - Microscopium (a microscope), Antlia (an air pump), Telescopium (a telescope). But all through history we have looked up to the sky and made images in the stars. On the wall of a cave in Lascaux France, there is a painting of a bull using the stars we recognize as the constellation of Taurus the bull. This painting has been dated to 17,300 years ago! So, the answer is: From ourselves as long as we've looked to the skies.

Answer 3

The name comes form ancient times. In the past the stars SEEMED a lot brighter to our ancestors than they do to most of us today. This is because we live at a time when our own night time lights are so bright that they 'pollute' the light of the night sky.

Imagine you were an ancient an looked up at the sky at night to see a sky ablaze with twinkling stars, you would soon notice pasterns in the stars (rather like joining the dots in a children's puzzle) and the images you would form from these patterns would be those of the things you were familiar with - lions, scorpions, bulls, goats, rams, hunters, horses etc. You would also notice that over the year certain of the patterns would come and go in the sky and you would look for their coming and going for reassurance that all was as it should be.

Thus the ancients who named the constellations thought that the pattern formed by the stars in the area of the sky covered by 'Taurus' thought it resembled the head of a bull. (In Latin, the word "Taurus" means "bull") and that is how it got its name.

Answer 4

The constellation names come from the names of Greek and Roman names or myths. As simple as that.

Answer 5

Some stars got their name by ancient Greeks naming them after animals, gods, and regular objects.

Answer 6

Orion, Lupus, Serpens, Hercules, and Draco