Constellations

Some of them, yes. Constellations along the Zodiac can be seen from either hemisphere, but constellations well away from the celesial equator cannot be seen very far in the other hemisphere. For example, Ursa Major is not visible in Australia, and the Southern Cross is not visible in Europe or North America.

Most of the "official" constellations were named by northern hemisphere astronomers, or European navigators sailing in southern waters. Look at how many southern hemisphere constellations have a nautical theme; the Telescope, the Octant, the Quadrant. Even Cetus, the Whale, was named by sailors, not people who LIVED there.

The question is unclear. Constellations are simply areas of sky and don't have an unambiguous "brightness." The star with the brightest apparent magnitude is in Canis Major, so that's as good an answer as any other.

Earth revolves around the sun. That is why the constellations we see from Earth appear to change.

Yes. The slaves would sing a song from the underground railroad and the line they would repeat was; "Follow the Drinking Gourd" Which told the slaves to follow the Big Dipper, North to freedom.

The standard designations of stars within a constellation is a Greek letter followed by the Latin name of the constellation. This is called the "Bayer designation".

In general - but not in EVERY case - the stars were lettered in order by brightness. Please remember that this was done a few hundred years ago, before the invention of detailed electronic instruments. And over the centuries, in a few cases the stars themselves have varied in brightness. For example, in the constellation of Orion, the star Betelgeuse is "Alpha Orionis", even though it is the SECOND-brightest star in Orion.

Why the discrepancy? A couple of reasons, perhaps. Rigel, the brightest star in Orion, isn't all THAT much brighter; both are "first magnitude" stars. Second, Betelgeuse is known to be a variable star, and 300 years ago we believe that Betelgeuse was actually brighter than Rigel is.

Actually, the stars are moving, as is everything else in the universe. It's just that the distances are so vast from our perspective (viewing point) that any movement is virtually undetectable.

Virgo the constellation is best visible at 21:00 (9 pm) during the month of May.

Hippopotamus

They are the celestial equivalent of longitude and latitude. If you are given the RSA and Dec of an object, you will be able dot find it on a chart. Or if you have a telescope that is computerised, you can input the coordinates and the telescope should go there automatically.

Temperate Deciduous Forests

Constellations are "unchanging" patterns that we humans make up in the arrangement of the various stars so far away. The patterns do change, but very slowly; the constellations that the ancient Greeks and Romans and Egyptians saw 2000 years ago is little changed now.

The solar system is right here; our Sun, the Earth, the Moon, the planets and comets and asteroids.

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.

Mars has no fixed relationship to Orion, or to any other stars. In ancient times, Mars, Venus and Jupiter were called "planets", from the Greek word for "wanderer"; the planets wander across the fixed stars, which do not change their relationships. (They actually do, but so slowly that a lifetime isn't enough to see the changes.)

Here in January, 2010, Mars appears near Orion in the evening sky, but as the Earth speeds past Mars in its orbit, Mars appears to move "retrograde" - the reverse of its normal path across the sky. By next month, it will have moved past Orion and will rise earlier and earlier each day.

Cancer is located within the "zodiac" with leo to the east & gemini to the west. It's most visible in the northern hemisphere during winter & spring but only on very dark and clear nights thus the lack of bright stars within the constellation.

The celestial sphere is divided up into regions, each of which is a constellation with a name like Orion, Lacerta or Andromeda. Every direction in space belongs in a constellation, for example Polaris is in Ursa Minor and Sirius is in Canis Major.

Most laypeople use the word constellation to mean a pattern of stars, but technically the proper word for that is "asterism." Most constellations have at least one famous asterism in them (the one with the same name as the constellation itself), but the constellation includes ALL the stars in that part of the sky, even those that are too faint to see, while the asterism is just the brightest stars.

No. The Zodiac are 12 constellations that lie in the plane of the ecliptic; circumpolar ("moving around the pole") stars are well above or below the ecliptic.

The region of the sky visible all year round is called "circumpolar". What stars and constellations are included there depends on your geographical location. For example, for somebody living 30 degrees south of the equator, a region around the south pole of the sky, with a radius of 30 degrees, would be circumpolar.

180.50 light years away.

Technically, every single one of them - but the ones that are closest are Ursa Major, Cassiopeia, Ursa Minor, Cepheus, & Draco.

You need to know not only the relative positions of the Big Dipper stars on the sky, but also their distances. The positions of the stars are given in coordinates called right ascension (RA) and declination (Dec). The RAs are usually given in units of hours, which relate to how the sky appears to rotate once a day in (approximately) 24 hours. The Decs tell how far the stars are north of the projection of the Earth's equator on the sky. These positions are fairly easy to measure, by just noting where the stars seems to be in the sky as we see them. The distances to the stars are much harder to measure. The Big Dipper stars are close enough to the Earth so that they seem to move around in the sky a little bit when they are viewed at different times of the year from the Earth as it moves in its orbit around the Sun. This small change in position during the year is called parallax by astronomers. The farther from the Sun, the less the stars move around. The best parallaxes come from a space satellite mission called HIPPARCOS. The HIPPARCOS results show that the Big Dipper stars are between about 80 and 120 light years from the Earth, with errors of a light year or two. With the direction and distance to each star in the Big Dipper, one can then make a 3-D plot of the stars' positions. The stars at either "end" of the Dipper (at the end of the "handle" and the outside "lip" of the bowl) are the farthest away from us. The other fice stars in the middle turn out to be at almost the same distance (80 light years) from us. So, one should envision the ends of the Dipper being the farthest away from us, while the stars in the middle form a nearly flat pattern as viewed from the Earth. Answered by David B. Shaffer, Ph.D. in astronomy, from Caltech.

They didn't always, but now they do. This is to make charting and reference more universal and easily understood. There are constellations now that cover the entire sky, and the borders between constellations have been defined. There are no gaps of the sky that fall outside of a defined consellation. So any star or other heavenly body can be named starting with the constellation name.

the constellation 'Ursa major' is used to identify the pole star

The constellation that Christopher Columbus used on his journey was the Polaris. He used a compass and limited nautical charts to correct the altitude of Polaris.

north