The Cassiopeia Asterism is Made Up of Five Stars Image Credit: KITTIPONG SOMKLANG, ShutterstockĦ. The foundation of the 88-constellation system that we now have was built on those 48 constellations. Two centuries later, Claudius Ptolemy, a well-known astronomer, music theorist, mathematician, and geographer, cataloged all the 48 celestial spheres. And it was in this poem that he intricately described all the constellations that the Greeks knew. This was done through fascinating stories and lore.īut in the 3 rd century, Aratus drafted a poem called Phaenomena. They were just treated as patterns in the sky, and the knowledge cascaded down orally from one generation to the next. In the beginning, the constellations didn’t have names. Historical writings have already confirmed that the Greeks talked about them, but we’re not so sure about the Babylonians-nevertheless, we suspect they knew something about them. The originals are also referred to as the ancient constellations as the earlier people talked a lot about them. Cassiopeia Is One of The Original ConstellationsĪt the moment, we have a total of 88 constellations known to man. We hope this also answers the question of whether or not these constellations are equally sized.ĥ. Thus, making it the 25 th largest constellation in the sky. For example, Hydra is the largest constellation in our night sky simply because it takes up 1,303 square degrees of that space.Ĭassiopeia only covers 598.407 square degrees, which is about 1.4% of the total celestial sphere. And the measurements are always in squared degrees. While measuring the total area occupied by a constellation, we often go with the boundaries set by the International Astronomical Union. Cassiopeia Is The 25 th Largest Constellation Image Credit: Alexey Lobanov, ShutterstockĤ. Regardless, we can all agree that it’s a letter. Well, some people think it’s a W, while others see it as an inverted M. In the case of Cassiopeia, it’s the letter W. But what we haven’t told you is, as a collective, this family always forms a shape of a person, mythical creature, or even an object.
We’ve already defined a constellation as a family of stars. Anytime she was asked who came close to her level of beauty, she confidently answered, “My daughter, Andromeda”. To be specific, Dionysus (Osiris) and Zeus (Amun).Īs the story goes, she felt like she was the most beautiful woman on the planet, even surpassing the beauty of Poseidon and Thetis-the former was the sea god, while the latter ruled by his side as the goddess. Its capital was called Meroe, and the only people who were allowed to worship there were deities. We came to learn that it was one of the inhabited lands on the southern side of Egypt, that started from Elephantine. For the record, Aethiopia is not our modern Ethiopia. She reigned over Aethiopia, which was one of the countries located on the northern coast of Africa.
Rumor has it that Cassiopeia was one of the rulers on the African continent. It’s abbreviated as Cas and pronounced as Cas-see-o-pee-ah.Īs per the International Astronomical Union guidelines, this name is the official name of the constellation. Cassiopeia Is a Latin NameĮven though these constellations were named after Greek mythological figures, their names are in Latin. Top 10 Facts & Myths About the Cassiopeia Constellation: 1. And now that you know what constellations are, it’s time to talk about our all-time favorite, the Cassiopeia. In other words, your preferred zodiac sign is nothing more than an abstraction from our physical constellations. For the most part, it’s due to the fact that constellations occupy different widths on the ecliptic, hence compelling the Sun to spend varying amounts of time in each celestial sphere. However, for the sake of clarification, we’d just like you to remember that all zodiacs are constellations, but not all constellations are zodiacs. Because we want our primary focus to be on the scientific and mythological attributes of these stars, we won’t be digging into the astrological aspect. Anytime you hear someone talk about how someone else is such a “Pisces, Gemini, or Virgo”, where exactly do you think they got those names from? Of course, these are all zodiac signs, but did you know they also double up as constellations?īy definition, a constellation is a family of stars, which have been identified and named after certain mythological figures.
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