what constellations did the greek see?
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Most ancient cultures saw pictures in the stars of the night sky. The earliest known efforts to catalogue the stars date to cuneiform texts and artifacts dating back roughly 6000 years. These remnants, found in the valley of the Euphrates River, suggest that the ancients observing the heavens saw the lion, the bull, and the scorpion in the stars. The constellations as we know them today are undoubtedly very different from those first few--our night sky is a compendium of images from a number of different societies, both ancient and modern. By far, though, we owe the greatest debt to the mythology of the ancient Greeks and Romans.\n\nThis website should help you a lot.  It talks seperately about 27 of the major constellations of Greek Mythology.\n\nAs far as which stars they saw?  When they lloked up at the skies without telescopes, they saw the same stars (with the exception of newly formed stars) as we see.  What we have been able to identify and name with our higher technology is such a vast list I wouldn't know where to begin.
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I have listed several sites below--I hope they are most helpful to you. :-)\n\nCorvus (Latin for Raven/Crow) is a small southern constellation with only 11 stars visible to the naked eye (brighter than magnitude 5.5). It was one of the 48 constellations listed by Ptolemy, and also counts among the 88 modern constellations.\n\nSome stars and interesting objects in Corvus\n\na (alpha) Corvi or Al Chiba is a magnitude 4.0 white star 68 light years away.\n\nb (beta) Corvi or Kraz is a magnitude 2.7 yellow giant star 290 light years away.\n\ng (gamma) Corvi or Gienah is a magnitude 2.6 blue-white star 190 light years away.\n\nd (delta) Corvi or Algorab is a wide double star 120 light years away. The brightest component visible to the unaided eye, is a magnitude 3.0 white star, that is accompanied by a magnitude 8.4 star often described as purplish in colour.\n\nNGC 4038 and NGC 4039 are called the Antennae or Rat tailed or Ring-tailed galaxies. They are two galaxies in collision, and photographs show two tails of stars ejected from the interaction. The system is a strong radio transmitter. At magnitude 10.5 a reasonable telescope and dark skies are needed to see this. The rat tails are not visible in telescopes.\n\nNGC 4782 and NGC 4783 are also two small elliptical galaxies in contact. The similar components with bright centres, appear in a field sprinkled thinly with faint stars. Photographs show diffuse material connecting the galaxies. At magnitude 11.7 a reasonable telescope and dark skies are needed for viewing these galaxies.\n\nNGC 4361 is a planetary nebula with a visible central star. Only the central star can be seen in small telescopes, but larger telescopes will show the haze surrounding the star. An OIII filter effects a small improvement.\n\nJust over the border of Corvus in the constellation Virgo lies the famous Sombrero galaxy, M 104. It is a spiral galaxy with a large nucleus and a dense lane of dust lying about 35 million light years away.
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Yes. The stars in that direction are the ones in the spiral arm that is closest to us, and the stars of the constellation Orion are part of that arm.
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Not often enough. When I was homeless living in my car, I would study the constellations, try to remember the name of each star in Orion. I had a star chart. If it were not for thieves, I would live in a tent again, watch the possums and raccoons come out at night, feed and watch the birds by day, and stare into the stars at night. My dream home though would have a lighthouse top with windows all around and a telescope. Enjoy your time outdoors, and try to learn the names of as many stars as you can, for me. I don't know when or if I'll ever get the time to enjoy them like I once did again.
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Depends what time of the year it is etc. but you can nearly always see Jupiter and Saturn and if a planet is at opposition then it is at its brightest when viewed from earth. Venus and Mars are also easy to spot. Mercury is elusive as it is generally close to the sun. I don't think you can see Pluto without a telescope, or Neptune and Uranus without some form of magnification e.g. binoculars
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personally, i favor discarding the use of constellations because they are unnatural.  humans took the pattern of stars they saw and designed figures from it.
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Edwin P. Hubble.  He was able to show that the so-called Andromeda Nebula was in fact a separate galaxy, and presented evidence that there were other galaxies in addition.
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Near big cities it is indeed harder to see some dim stars, because of light polution (the light from the city providing ambient light that makes it harder to see dim stars).  And yes pollution can dim things a bit ... although in many cities (like Los Angeles) the air is actually cleaner now than it was 30-40 years ago (in the 70s).\n\nBut away from big cities you are essentially looking at the same sky as the ancient Greeks were looking at.  (Some stars have moved in that time, but not much.)\n\nThe basic ideas about constellations is not so much that the positions "look" like the things they are named after  ... Leo never looked much like a lion.\n\nThe basic idea is that Greeks (and other ancients) noticed that the stars stayed pretty constant night after night, but slowly rotated across the sky as the year went on, and cycled back to where it started each year (which is what gave them a way to know how long a year was ... "when that bright star in Virgo is in the center of that opening in the temple ceiling, then we know a year has gone by").  And second they noticed that some stars were much more mobile than the others ... the wanderers (the planets), but they also followed certain patterns.\n\nIn order to monitor both of these things, they needed to be able to keep track of the arrangements of the stars from night to night, and year to year ... so they gave names to the different clusters.  That's all they are ... just mnemonics to be able to remember what that little cluster is.
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Our galaxy is named the Milky Way because one of its spiral arms is visible in the night sky as a bright silvery white band. The Greeks called it the "Galaxias Kyklos (Milky Circle)", and the Romans called it the "Via Lactea (Milky Way)". The Greek term survived as the modern name "Galaxy". However, it is much later the we discover that the Milky Way was a galaxy of stars and that our Sun is one of the billions of stars within the Milky Way.\n\nThe Milky Way gets its name from a Greek myth about the goddess Hera who sprayed milk across the sky. The details of the Greek myth is as follows:\n\nIn order to win the hand of Alcmene, the youth Amphitryon was required to avenge the death of Alcmene's brothers. On the very night that Amphitryon fulfilled his pledge, the supreme god Zeus disguised himself as the youth and stole into Alcmene's chamber. He assured her that the act of vengeance had been fulfilled, and lay with her. The result of their union was the hero Hercules.\n\nZeus' wife Hera was notoriously jealous of her husband's infidelities, usually taking vengeance on either the rival, or the children of Zeus' extra-marital couplings. On this occasion, however, Zeus outwitted Hera. He arranged for her to come across the infant as if abandoned, and in compassion the goddess began to suckle it, thereby granting Hercules the gift of immortality through her milk. But Hercules gave Hera's nipple such a lusty tug that the goddess screamed in pain. As she pulled the child away from her, a fountain gushed from her breast. Some of the milk fell to the earth, to form lilies, but most of it shot into the sky, to become the Milky Way.
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Yep, Orion was a hunter for the Greeks.  It's also similar to Osiris, who was an Egyptian god.  It's the brightest constellation in the sky, and looks the most like a person, so a lot of cultures associated it with their own gods.
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I like distinctive shapes as they are immediately recognisable. So Orion and the w-shape of Cassiopea.\n\nBit I had most fun with the Pleiades, which are a cluster near Aldebaran, the "eye" of Taurus the bull. Some of the stars in the cluster are 5th or 6th magnitude, so only visible on a clear night. Not so likely to have a sufficiently clear night in a city. So wherever I went, I used to look to see how many of the Seven Sisters I could see.
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Of course you see a different view in the spring than in the fall, just as you would expect. Right now you can see Orion the Hunter and Leo the Lion prominent in the spring sky. In the fall, you see Scorpio the Scorpion and also the Virgin on her back (not a Virgin for long).\n\nWhat are the "same" stars that you think you see in the spring and in the fall?
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A sampling of famous astronomers\nAstronomer Contribution \nHipparchus and Ptolemy Determined the positions of about 1,000 bright stars, tried to explain the puzzles of astronomy without refuting only believed geocentric model of universe and classified stars by magnitude. \nAristarchus of Samos First known person to propound the heliocentric model of universe. Attempted to calculate the sizes and distances of the Sun and Moon. \nNasir al-Din al-Tusi This Persian astronomer gave the first extant exposition of the whole system of plane and spherical trigonometry. Made very accurate tables of planetary movements and named many stars. Developed the Tusi-couple which resolves linear motion into the sum of two circular motions. He also calculated the value of 51' for the precession of the equinoxes and contributed to construction and usage of astrolabe. \nNicolaus Copernicus First exponent of heliocentrism in modern times. \nTycho Brahe Did develop many important astronomical instruments, and achieved accurate measurments of the heavens by improving scentific methodology and by designing instruments on a large scale. His measurements of the orbit of Mars were very important to the development of astronomy. \nJohannes Kepler Suggested the elliptical orbits of planets, and propounded his Laws of Planetary Motion. \nGalileo Galilei Was the first to use the telescope to observe the sky. Condemned to house arrest for his discoveries by Inquisitional edict, which was lifted 359 years later by Pope John Paul II. \nIsaac Newton Published Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687), containing the "Newton's laws of motion", which are fundamental to mechanical physics, and which explained Kepler's laws of planetary motion. Predicted the orbits of the planets. \nSubrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Extensive work on the internal mechanisms of stars, particularly known for determining the effect of special relativity on stars, including being the first to calculate the Chandrasekhar limit, which he did, without a calculator, on a boat journey. \nHenrietta Swan Leavitt Catalogued Cepheid variable stars in the Magellanic Clouds, in 1912 discovered the relationship between luminosty and periodicity in Cepheids -- leading to Hertzprung's later work. \nEjnar Hertzsprung determined the distance to several Cepheids, when Cepheids were detected in other galaxies such as the Andromeda galaxy, the distance to those galaxies could then be determined. \nEdwin Hubble Discovered the expansion of the universe. (Hubble's Law) The Hubble Orbiting Space Telescope was named in his honor.
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You forgot one Chaos the main Greek god.\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_%28mythology%29
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Greetings,\n\nHere are some links you might find useful.\n\nChinese:\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_constellation\nhttp://www.chinapage.com/astronomy/syho/syho.html\n\nLakota Native Americans (midwest -U.S.):\nhttp://www.kstrom.net/isk/stars/startabs.html\n\nNative Americans (misc.):\nhttp://eev2.liu.edu/e3/stargazer/native.htm\n\nEgyptian:\nhttp://www.egyptologyonline.com/astronomy.htm\nhttp://www.personal.psu.edu/users/d/r/drn116/egypt.html\n\nHope some of those help\n\n-matt
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sounds like it could have been sirius, in the constellation canis major. this is the brightest star in the northern hemisphere.
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SIRUS  (the dog star) IS The brightest of all stars, Sirius, belongs to this constellation.\nIt borders to Monoceros in the north, Lepus to the west and Columba to the southwest while the eastern border is covered by Puppis, therefore it streches roughly from RA = -11 degrees to RA = -33 degrees and Decl = 6h 15m to Decl = 7h 30m, respectively.