Sitting outside tonight me and my girlfriend were discussing constellations and I was just wondering if a constellation is a pattern of stars or certain stars? What I mean by that for example is let's say I saw the big dipper... Is it possible I could see another arrangement of the big dipper or is there only one pattern of stars that show it?|||There is only one big dipper!
If you search the sky you might find another group of stars that look a bit like the big dipper but it would be wrong. the big dipper points to the pole star, another group would not, so if you used the "wrong" dipper you would never find the pole star and get lost.
There are 88 officially recognised constellations in the modern system (the big dipper is not one of them, it is an asterism) and other cultures have different constellations to ours.
For instance "our" Orion was thr god RA to the ancient egyptians and is an archer to the indians.
Download Stellarium (it's free) to see all the constellations as they look from YOUR house|||Constellations are patterns of specific stars arbitrarily defined based upon ancient image recognition, and are useful for indicating direction in the sky and space.
There is only one big dipper. Even if you saw some other pattern of stars which are for some reason identically the same shape as the big dipper, it is not the big dipper, because the big dipper has a certain set of stars.
You can obviously define your own constellations, but they will not be what others understand them to be.
I remember constantly seeing three stars in a row, and saying "hey look Orion's belt". The listener who was more knowlegeable said "that is only visible during winter", and then I say "danget! I saw three stars in a row, that is Orion's belt-ish enough for me".
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