How many constellations are there?

There are 88 international constellations in the world.

1922, the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union sorted out the constellations used in history and their names, re-divided them scientifically according to the right ascension circle and the declination circle on the celestial sphere, and determined 88 constellations commonly used in the modern world. The history of constellations has been thousands of years, and different nationalities and regions have their own constellation distinctions and legends.

The 88 constellations currently used in the world originated from ancient Babylon and Greece. It is Bayer's creation to name the stars with Greek letters, and it is Franm Stie's creation to name the stars with Arabic numerals. 1928, the international astronomical union officially announced 88 cosmic constellations: 28 in the northern sky, 48 in the southern sky.

Constellation theory

In order to facilitate Taoist astrologers to recognize stars, people divide several regions with different sizes according to the natural distribution of stars in the sky, and each region is called a constellation. Connect the bright stars in the same constellation with lines to form various figures. In shape, they are similar to animals and utensils. There are nearly 6,000 stars visible to the naked eye, each of which can only be classified as a constellation, and each constellation can be identified by the shape of a bright star.

Basically, dividing stars into constellations is a random process. Different civilizations have different constellations made up of different stars-although some constellations made up of more conspicuous stars are roughly the same in different civilizations, such as Orion and Scorpio. The International Astronomical Union divides the sky into 88 official constellations with precise boundaries, so that every star in the sky belongs to a specific constellation. Most of these official constellations are based on the ancient Greek traditional constellations handed down from the Middle Ages.