CONSTELLATIONS

He insisted that stars were people so well loved,

they were traced in constellations , to live forever…………

-Anonymous
Agenda

Introduction
What are constellations?
Leo Major and Minor
Factopedia

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Introduction

Since the 1000 C.E in Babylonia, astronomers were deeply intrigued by the
dazzling beauty of the stars. People were fascinated at the amazing patterns
these stars made and linked various things in their everyday life with them.
They tried observing them with their crude telescopes and observed that few
of these designs were always in the same alignment with each other. Because
of lack of proper equipment and knowledge they couldn’t explore more about
these things. But since the mid sixteenth century on the coming of legendary
astronomers like Isaac Newton and Johannes Kepler we have known a lot
about stars, planets and these patterns, also called constellations.

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What are Constellations?

A constellation is a group of stars that looks like a particular shape and has

been given a name .The stars in a constellation are located far away from

Earth (distances in light years) and only the brightest ones amongst them are

seen in the night sky. At present, the International Astronomical Union (IAU)

has recognized 88 constellations each of different sizes and shapes.

 Leo Major
• Leo constellation lies in the northern sky. It is one
of the  largest zodiac constellations in the sky.
• Leo represents the lion and is usually associated
with the Nemean lion in Greek mythology .
• The constellation contains 9-15 stars and can be
seen in the northern hemisphere during summer
in India.
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 Leo Minor
• Leo Minor is a small, faint constellation in the
northern sky, with only one star brighter than
fourth magnitude.
• The constellation’s name means “the smaller lion”
in Latin.
• It contains roughly 18 stars with 5 of them that are
spectacularly bright . It is seen in India in the
month of April. 2/8/20XX 6
Factopedia
• The largest constellation in the sky is Hydra(Sea Serpent) which takes up roughly 3.17% of the sky.
• The smallest constellation is the Southern Cross(Crux) which is about 0.17% of the sky.
• There are 22 different constellations whose names start with the letter-”C”!
• Out of the 88 constellations recognized by the astronomical community, more than half can be seen
from the Northern Hemisphere.
• A constellation usually contains about 30-40 stars however we see only the brightest ones among
them(Usually this figure is 7-15)
• The closest stars to Earth after the Sun are Alpha Centauri and Proxima Centauri which are 4.3
billion light years away.
• There are about 10 raised to 22 stars in the entire universe!!
• After the “Big Bang”, the phenomenon due to which the Milky Way was formed the galaxies in the
universe are constantly drifting apart from each other . This is called the “Red Shift”. 7