Asterisms · 23
Asterisms
Not constellations, but the shapes people actually use — the Big Dipper, the Summer Triangle, Orion’s Belt, the Teapot. Which stars make each one, which constellations they borrow from, and where to look tonight.
- Big Dipper The Big Dipper, or the Plough: seven stars that have been a wagon, a ladle, seven sages and a coffin — and the most useful signpost in the northern sky.
- Circlet The Circlet: a faint ring of stars that is the head of the western fish of Pisces.
- Coathanger The Coathanger: a line of six stars with a hook of four hanging from it. Upside down, from the north.
- Diamond Cross The Diamond Cross, in Carina: a southern cross-shape a little larger and fainter than Crux.
- Dragon Head The head of Draco: a lozenge of four stars near Vega, whose brightest, Eltanin, passes nearly overhead in London.
- False Cross The False Cross: bigger and dimmer than the Southern Cross, and a trap for anyone looking for the real one.
- Goatlings The Kids: three faint stars beside Capella, the goat’s young, one of which vanishes behind a dark disc every 27 years.
- Great Square of Pegasus The Great Square of Pegasus: four stars marking the autumn sky, and an honest test of how dark your sky is.
- Guardians of the Pole The Guardians of the Pole: Kochab and Pherkad, circling Polaris like the hand of a clock.
- Keystone The Keystone: four stars in a lopsided square that make Hercules’ body, and the way to his great cluster.
- Little Dipper The Little Dipper, with Polaris at the end of its handle. Its faint middle stars are a test of your sky.
- Northern Cross The Northern Cross: the body and wings of Cygnus, the swan, laid along the Milky Way.
- Orion's Belt Orion’s Belt: three stars in a straight line — maybe the most recognised pattern on Earth, and a different thing in every culture.
- Orion's Sword Orion’s Sword, hanging from his Belt — and its fuzzy middle “star” is the Orion Nebula.
- Sickle The Sickle: a backwards question mark that is the lion’s head and mane, ending in Regulus.
- Summer Triangle The Summer Triangle: Vega, Deneb and Altair, the three bright corners of northern summer nights, straddling the Milky Way.
- Teapot The Teapot: the brightest stars of Sagittarius, with the Milky Way rising from its spout like steam — right where the centre of the galaxy lies.
- The Pointers The Pointers: two stars at the end of the Big Dipper’s bowl that point to Polaris — and have done for every navigator in the north.
- The Y in Aquarius The Water Jar of Aquarius: a small Y of four stars from which the stream of water pours.
- V of Taurus The V of Taurus: the bull’s face, made of the Hyades cluster, with red Aldebaran as its eye.
- W The W of Cassiopeia — or an M, depending on the time of night, as it turns around the pole.
- Winter Hexagon The Winter Hexagon: six of the brightest stars in the sky in one huge ring, spanning six constellations.
- Winter Triangle The Winter Triangle: Betelgeuse, Sirius and Procyon — an almost equilateral triangle on either side of the faint winter Milky Way.