Where Are the Constellations?

by Stephanie Sabol, Who HQ, Laurie A. Conley (Illustrator)

Overview

Calling all stargazers, this addition to the New York Times bestselling series is sure to be the perfect book for you!

From the #1 New York Times Best-Selling Who Was? series comes Where Is?, a series that tells the stories of world-famous landmarks and natural wonders and features a fold-out map!

Ancient people from many different cultures--Greek, Roman, Mezo-American, Arab--all looked up and imagined pictures in the sky by "drawing" a line from one star to another, like a connect-the-dots puzzle. These star pictures--constellations--represented myths and legends from the various cultures that still fascinate us today.

Author of the tremendously popular Where Is Our Solar System? Stephanie Sabol relates many of the most popular constellation stories and explains what stars actually are: how they formed, why they die, and how they're grouped into constellation families.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593223741
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	07/06/2021
Series:	Where Is? Series
Pages:	112
Sales rank:	402,219
Product dimensions:	5.81(w) x 7.94(h) x 0.43(d)
Lexile:	890L (what's this?)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Stephanie Sabol is the author of several Who HQ books, including Where Is Our Solar System? and What Was the Titanic? She currently resides in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Read an Excerpt

Where Are the Constellations?
 

Thousands of years ago, there were no calendars or clocks as we know them. People couldn’t tell time by glancing at their cell phones. Instead, they looked for clues in the sky—-most often by looking at stars—-to tell them what time of day or even what time of year it was. The ancient Egyptians, for example, eagerly waited for a certain star to appear. Once it did, it meant the flooding of the Nile River was about to start. When the flood receded, the soil was fertile and ready for planting crops.
 
There were also no accurate maps. However, the ancient Greeks noticed that one star always appeared in the same place—-we call it the North Star, or Polaris (Polar Star). Sailors used it as a guide to help them figure out in which direction they were heading.
 
Today, in cities, lights and pollution blot out many stars. However, on a clear night a person who is in the country can see thousands. Still, finding one star among thousands can be hard. So long ago in different cultures people looked for groups of stars, and they imagined them forming pictures by drawing lines from one star to another. It was like a connect--the--dots puzzle today. These “pictures” were easier to spot than just one star. Each picture was given a name and told a story.
 
Different cultures had different names and stories for the same group of stars. To people in North America, a group of seven stars looked like a long--handled soup spoon. They called it the Big Dipper (dipper is a word for this kind of soup spoon). However, in England, the same stars were known as the Great Plough. (A plough, more commonly spelled plow in the United States, is a farming tool that breaks up soil.) In Germany, the stars were known as the Great Cart.
 
Star pictures are known as constellations. The scientific study of stars—and everything else in the sky—is called astronomy. Astronomers of the twenty--first century know far more about the stars than ancient peoples did. They have learned what stars are made of, how long they live, and how they die. Yet despite all that has been discovered, even astronomers—-just like everyone else—-still look to the night sky with the same sense of wonder.
 
 
Chapter 1: Our Address in Space

 
Space. What is it? Well, it’s everything in the sky that is above Earth’s atmosphere—-a layer of gases that is about sixty miles thick. Nobody knows exactly how big space is. But it’s enormous, really too big for our minds to grasp. So, it’s helpful to think of Earth as having an address in space, just like when a person has an address where they live.
 
Earth—-the planet we live on—-is part of our solar system. Our solar system contains eight planets that orbit (circle) just one star, the sun. A star is a ball of hot gas—-mostly hydrogen and helium. Even though the sun seems huge to us, it’s actually a medium--size star. And since it’s 93 million miles away from us, it’s the closest star to Earth. During the day, the light from the sun is so bright, it blocks out other stars. But at night, after the sun has set, many other stars in the sky can be seen.
 
Our solar system is part of a galaxy, a city of stars. There are many galaxies. Our galaxy is known as the Milky Way. It was named because of the whitish hue it gives off that looks like milk spilled across the sky. It contains at least 100 billion stars!
 
The Milky Way looks like a pinwheel with four long arms. Our solar system is located in one of the four arms. It orbits around the center of the Milky Way at about 515,000 miles per hour. Even at that very fast speed it will take our solar system 230 million years to orbit all the way around the Milky Way’s center. Dinosaurs roamed our planet the last time our solar system was in this spot!
 
What is bigger than a galaxy? A group of galaxies. The Milky Way is part of a cluster of more than thirty galaxies called the Local Group. This group contains the Andromeda galaxy. Of big galaxies, it is the one closest to the Milky Way. (The Andromeda galaxy is twice as wide as the Milky Way.) Scientists predict that in the next few billion years the two galaxies will collide and form a super--galaxy.
 
As big as the Local Group is, it’s just a small part of a larger group of galaxy clusters called the Virgo Supercluster. It’s an enormous collection of more than two thousand galaxies. These galaxies are all part of our universe. The universe includes everything—-Earth, our solar system, the Milky Way galaxy, and beyond. The universe is everything in space that we can and can’t see.

Table of Contents

Where Are the Constellations? 1

Our Address in Space 5

Star Tracking 16

Our Star, the Sun 30

The Life of a Star 38

Constellation Families 52

The Zodiac 77

Stargazing 94

Timelines 106

Bibliography 108