Where do star constellation stories come from?

I'm doing a report on the universe and we get to choose what we get to do. I'm going to do mine on how star constellations get there stories from. Any ideas??? Any websites I can go to?|||I am an artist painting the constellations, so I've studied a bit of their history. I put a bunch of links for you to try in the references here, including my art site, where I have the stories linked to the ones I've already painted.





There are exactly 88 constellations as recognized by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). The short answer is that their stories come from all kinds of places over a period of about 4000 years. The long answer is this:





Most of the 88 are ancient and go back to the days when they used to steer ships by looking at the stars. Ptolomy the Greek, mentions 48 of them, and this was 2000 years ago....so most of those 48 have some very interesting stories that relate to Greek mythology, Hercules, Zeus and such.





Of special note are the 12 they call the Zodiac, which are much much older than even Ptolomy, going almost back to the dawn of civilization. The stories behind the Zodiacs are interesting because the sun goes through them. They are why we have the familiar birth signs like Sagittarius, Libra, Capricorn etc. If you draw a line where the sun goes across they sky, on the day you were born the sun was in a certain constellation and this is your birth sign that they use for making the horoscopes.





At some point, astronomers tried to divide the entire night sky into groups based on the constellations and there were still big gaps between the ancient ones. They sort of just invented some extras to cover everything (this brings us up to the 88 we have now.)





An astronomer named Johann Bayer, named 11 new ones in the 1600's. He named his after animals like "Dorado", the Goldfish, and "Pavo", the Peacock.





Another astronomer named Abbe Nicolas Louis de Lacaille came along and named the final new batch. Instead of naming them from Greek mythology or for animals, he named his after really simple machines and scientific instruments. We get some strange constellations like "The Setsquare" "The Air Pump" "The Microscope" "The Chisel" "The Furnace" "The Pendulum Clock", and one called Mensa, the Table, after Table Mountain in South Africa.





If you are looking for some good stories, you should googlesearch or wikipedia the name of a certain constellation. Say "Ursa Major" or "Ursa Minor" or any one of the other 86...they have really interesting stories.





I hope this is of good help.|||look into greek mythology. That is where the names of most constellations come from.





Some myths have it that a greek hero might be honored by the gods by being placed in the sky.


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every culture has its own set of constellations, most of the currently identified ones in the Northern Hemisphere are from Greece/Rome.





For example, greeks saw the big dipper as the tail of a bear,


chinese saw a bureaucracy procession held in a cart,


Medieval Europeans saw a hand held plow,


Some saw a wagon or cart,


Today we see a dipper.|||Star Contellations get their stories from whatever culture you're in.





Primarily, most of us take our contellations (and hence their stories) from Greek and Roman mythology, because that is the culture that dominated our ancestor's homelands.





This is not ALWAYS true, however.





For example, in ancient China, the constellation we know as the "Big Dipper" (also "Ursa Major") was called something else entirely, and relates to the celestial bureaucracy.|||There are three main origins of constellations.


Western - Which traces back to ancient Greece


Chinese and Indian (see source for more info on these)