• Question: How many stars can you see everynight, why some stars are called "Shooting Stars.", and why some stars make different pattens?

    Asked by to Charli, Heather, Oliver, Becky on 25 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Charlotte Flavell

      Charlotte Flavell answered on 25 Jun 2014:

      Hi raiden9080,

      The number of stars you can see all depends on several things: how much light there is, whether you are using a telescope, how good your sight is, where you are on the planet (when I was in Australia I could see the Southern Cross (a constellation of stars which is on the Australian flag ) but you can’t see it in England because we are too far North). A good estimate would be somewhere in the thousands for the average number of stars you can see.

      Shooting stars aren’t actually stars (like the sun), they are relatively small bits of rock that hit Earth’s atmosphere from space. When they hit, they heat up and glow which is why we see them. They are also called meteors. If a meteor manages to survive the Earth’s atmosphere and make it on to the ground then it is called a meteorite.

    • Photo: Rebecca Williams

      Rebecca Williams answered on 26 Jun 2014:

      The patterns that stars make are called constellations. There are 88 official constellations in the night sky.

      The constellations were first listed by a man called Ptolemy in AD200 – thats 1800 years ago! But, he borrowed a lot of the constellations from someone called Eudoxus of Cnidus, a Greek astronomer who lived in the 4th century BC – thats 2400 years ago! Some of the patterns in the stars were known about and described by man going back as far as the Bronze Age.

      These constellations occur naturally. The stars are scattered through the night sky. When we look up at them, we see patterns. It’s like doing a dot to dot. The brightest stars looked like they could make shapes if you joined up some of the dots, so these were named.

      Humans have always looked up to the sky and wondered what was up there. Imagaine not knowing what stars are, but you could see all these bright objects sparkling in the sky? It must have felt magical, or a product of the gods. This is why people found patterns in the stars and named them. The Greeks used the constellations in their myths and legends.

      Today, astronomers use the constellations as a handy way to divide up the night sky into areas. So, if you’ve discovered a new star you can say it is in the area of which constellation.

Comments