What is a constellation? Are there really constellations in the sky? Did modern constellations originate from the Astral Palace in China?

Long ago, human ancestors noticed that there were many twinkling stars in the night sky, which made the night sky dazzling. People gradually began to learn to observe the stars. Later, people found that the position and arrangement of the stars are regular, and the position of the stars can help people guide the direction. As a result, different human civilizations have grouped the stars in their own ways and named them after animals they are familiar with and people in fairy tales. So in people's eyes, all kinds of beautiful graphics appeared in the sky, and the mysterious night sky became the theater of fairy tales. The grouping of these stars is the embryonic form of constellations in modern astronomy.

Looking up at the sky on a clear night, you can see the stars all over the sky, and if you are lucky, you can also see the Milky Way. Humans have long learned to observe the starry sky, connect the stars with invisible lines, imagine them into various patterns, and weave them into various myths and legends. These patterns are called constellations. Therefore, the constellation originally belongs to astrology and is a part of superstition. Later, with the development of astronomy, stars need to be grouped for the convenience of research, and each constellation is actually the initial and natural grouping of stars, so scientists also adopted the naming and grouping method of constellations. Astronomers call those "motionless" stars stars.

Every star in the universe is at a different distance from the earth. In order to determine the position of the stars in the sky, scientists imagined the earth as the center of the ball, made the whole outer space into a big ball, and then gave the big ball a nice name-"celestial ball". Therefore, no matter how far a star is from the earth, every star will leave a shining shadow on the celestial sphere. So many stars seem to be on the same sphere. When we connect the shadows of some close-by stars with lines, many beautiful figures appear in the sky, just like those connected pictures we drew in art class. The figure formed by the projection connection of these stars is a constellation.

China, as the only ancient civilization that has not been destroyed in the long history, has a profound historical accumulation, so did the constellation really originate from China?

In ancient China, in order to know the stars and observe the astronomical phenomena, people grouped the observed stars and named each group. Such a star combination is called a star official. This seems to be a bit similar to the constellation now. Among these star officials, the most important thing is twenty-eight nights. Twenty-eight Nights divides the constellations in the sky into twenty-eight groups in great detail. The ancients named 28 hostels with animals and myths and legends, and divided them into four areas according to their directions, called "four elephants". In ancient times, there were four most important time points in a year: vernal equinox, summer solstice, autumn equinox and winter solstice. At some time in history, these four elephants were the standard constellations of these four time points.

1978, Chinese archaeologists found a suitcase in the ancient tomb during the Warring States Period, and drew a star map on this suitcase, which is the earliest existing star map with the name of 28 hotels in China and even in the world. However, when people say constellations now, they don't mean these 28 nights. Scorpio, maiden, Aquarius, etc. It's not Xuanwu and Suzaku with ancient domineering. You know, the method of dividing the starry sky in ancient China is unique, with its own unique style and cultural connotation, which is obviously different from the concept of constellation that people say now.

Although the constellations in the modern sense are related to astrology in ancient China, they are obviously not the same thing.