Constellations

88 cards · Legendary

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Constellations

88 cards · Artist AI generated

The constellations are far older than astronomy, and for most of history there was no agreed list of them. Different countries drew different figures, atlases disagreed, and anybody with a telescope and a patron could invent a new one and put it on a chart. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries left the sky littered with a Printing Press, a Cat, an Owl, a Balloon and several flattering tributes to kings.

In 1922 the International Astronomical Union settled it by vote. Eighty-eight constellations were recognised and every other one was abolished, which is why the sky you can name today is an administrative decision taken in the twentieth century rather than an inheritance from the Greeks.

The borders came next. In 1930 Eugene Delporte drew them as straight lines running along the coordinate grid, which he took from the year 1875. The Earth wobbles slowly on its axis, so that grid has been drifting ever since, and on a modern star chart the boundaries are no longer quite vertical or horizontal. The sky was divided up with a ruler, and the ruler has been sliding for a century.

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