Day of Inventing New Constellations June 15. For most people, it's an ordinary day. But for amateur astronomers, science fiction enthusiasts, and poets, it's a reason to look at the night sky and draw something new upon it. The Day of Inventing New Constellations is an unofficial but very inspiring holiday. It calls on us to move away from the strict maps of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and let our imagination run wild. After all, ancient Greeks, Arabs, and Chinese also looked at the stars and saw heroes, animals, and objects in them. Today, we can do the same. Let's figure out how constellations are born, whether we can invent our own, and why it's needed. History of Constellations: From Antiquity to the Official List The first constellations were invented by the Sumerians and Babylonians 4000 years ago. The Greeks, and then the Romans, systematized them. Ptolemy compiled a catalog of 48 constellations in the 2nd century AD (Great Bear, Orion, Swan, etc.). During the Age of Great Geographical Discoveries, Europeans saw the southern sky, and new constellations appeared: Peacock, Toucan, Southern Cross, Keel. In the 16th-18th centuries, astronomers (Bayer, Hevelius, Lacaille) filled in the gaps, adding dozens of constellations. In 1922, the International Astronomical Union approved the final list of 88 constellations, establishing strict boundaries. Since then, no new constellations have been officially added. But unofficially? No one is stopping us from daydreaming. Why People Invent Constellations Constellations are a way to organize the chaos of stars. For ancient people, they were a map to navigate the sea and desert. For priests, a repository of myths. For astrologers, a tool for predictions. Today, constellations help astronomers find objects (for example, "a galaxy in the constellation Andromeda"). But an ordinary person sees stars as random points. By inventing constellations, we restore a connection with the cosmos, make it familiar an ... Read more