Re: Alien constellations

philospher77@xxxxxxxxx writes:

On Sun, 6 Jan 2008 18:53:54 -0800, "James Gassaway"
<dtravel@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

If nothing else the children would name constellations and make up stories
to go with them. And if the studies of folklore among homeless children is
any indication, the consellations and stories will probably be surprising
consistent even between groups on the same planet not in contact with each
other.

Really? I can't recall ever doing this, nor any of my friends doing
it. Identifying ones that were already created, yes. But not making
up new ones.

I have a dim memory that at one point in elementary school,
when we'd have an apparently random number of visits to the middle
schools in the area to see their planetarium shows, we were given a
map of the stars without constellation lines and urged to draw our
own in.

I don't remember that anything remarkable came of it, or even
what I did with the project. If I know myself, I probably divided the
sky so that each new constellation had roughly the same number of stars
and was as convex as possible. While this would utterly defeat the
vague purpose of the exercise I would likely see it as organizing
things equitably.

--
Joseph Nebus
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Alien constellations
    ... consistent even between groups on the same planet not in contact with each ... I have a dim memory that at one point in elementary school, ... sky so that each new constellation had roughly the same number of stars ...
    (rec.arts.sf.written)
  • Daily Report # 4326
    ... Exploring the Scaling Laws of Star Formation ... extra-solar planets orbiting six stars. ... extrasolar planet observation missions such as SIM PlanetQuest, TPF, ... Imaging Scattered Light from Debris Disks Discovered by the Spitzer ...
    (sci.astro.hubble)
  • Daily Report #4844
    ... sequence stars other than the Sun. ... to carry out FGS astrometric studies on four stars hosting seven ... Our understanding of the planet formation process will ... as such by assuming that the minimum mass is the actual mass. ...
    (sci.astro.hubble)
  • California, Carnegie Team Reports 28 New Exoplanets, 7 New Brown Dwarfs
    ... increasing to 236 the total number of known exoplanets. ... California and Carnegie Planet Search team and the Anglo-Australian ... well as planets farther from their parent stars. ... The California and Carnegie Planet Search team is headed by Geoffrey ...
    (sci.space.news)
  • NASA Scientist Finds World With Triple Sunsets
    ... The new planet, called HD 188753 Ab, ... Konacki of the California ... accounting for more than half of all stars. ... planets called "hot Jupiters," which are gas giants that zip ...
    (sci.space.news)