STARS AND CONSTELLATIONS
People used to believe that the stars were
points of light attached to the heavens.
Today we know that stars are actually
glowing balls of gas in space, just like our
Sun. In order to orient themselves in the
confusion of all those stars, our ancestors
created the constellations over 2,000 years
ago. And because they are so old, they still
have Latin names. In reality, of course, the
stars in a constellation are not close to each
other at all, and their actual distances vary
quite a bit.
Why is it so difficult to recognize the
constellations when you look at the night
sky? One reason is that the night sky is
constantly changing. Take a look at the stars
one evening, and then go back inside and
KEY WORD: "Milky Way"
The Milky Way is a softly glowin
g strip
that you can sometimes see in th
e night
sky if you’re in a dark enough loc
ation. It
consists of thousands of weakly s
hining
stars. The Milky Way is actually o
ur own
galaxy. If we could view it from f
ar away,
it would look like a vast starry sp
iral.
There are a lot of other systems j
ust like
that in space.
come back out an hour later. You will notice
how the entire sky has shifted. That’s because
our Earth is rotating. In addition, our Earth
also rotates around the Sun during the year.
That means that the direction in which we
look when we look out into space will change
a little every night. And that’s why the
constellations we see in winter are different
from the ones we see in summer.
Earth rotates once each day around its own axis
and once each year around the Sun. That is why
our view of the stars in the sky is always changing.
CHECK IT OUT
26
Sp
rin
g
Summer
Au
tu
m
n
Winter
Orion
Pegasus
Aquila
Leo
Sun
Earth
