Skywise Unlimited

The sky is divided into 88 parts. If you play connect-the-dots within these boundaries, some of the patterns resemble the names, but most were never meant to. Just like Washington State doesn’t look like George Washington. Click on the names below for a snarky review of the starlore of the constellations and the stuff we […]

Aquarius is a constellation in the zodiac, the field of stars the sun plows through on its yearly trek. Here we have a constellation that is an excellent example of how a group of stars gets a name without connecting the dots. It was named by the Babylonians. In ancient Babylon, which is essentially Iraq, […]

The constellation of Aries is pretty much just three dim little stars. A small flattened triangle, that’s it. Sorry if you identify Aries with your birthday, but that really is it. If you are looking to get the star pattern as a birth-sign tattoo, this one should be the cheapest. The Babylonians at first decided […]

Cancer is a constellation of the zodiac, which is the circle of animals defined by the yearly path of the sun. The zodiac is the oldest known method of finding ones way across the sky. Folks figured out a long time ago that the sun travels around a seemingly changeless, be-speckled sphere. There are thirteen […]

The constellation of Gemini represents the twin sons of Jupiter, whose names are Castor and Pollux. Those two boys are also represented by the bright stars that are drawn as the heads of the figures when you connect the dots. Ptolemy added Gemini to his maps a couple of thousand years ago when he was […]

The constellation Leo shows up in the early spring, when frogs wake up, the crocuses start blooming, and pudgy old guys begin meandering around Lowes in cargo shorts and birkenstocks. These stars dominate the spring sky the way Orion dominates the winter. In the weeks before the equinox Leo begins leaping up from the eastern […]

The constellation of Libra represents a set of scales and it is by far the newest of the zodiacal membership. It may seem odd that there is a machine for weighing stuff in the weird line-up of monsters and zoo critters. On the other hand its two brightest stars have my most favorite star names; […]

The constellation of Ophiuchus represents a big guy who figured out how to kill snakes and then bring them back to life. He figured if it worked on snakes it should work on humans too. The gods killed him of course, because they’re gods and that’s what they do. Here’s a bit of trivia for […]

The Autumn constellation of Pisces is a good example of how a group of stars can get a name without being a connect-the-dots sort of thing. It appears to have been started in ancient Mesopotamia by astronomers in the easternmost region of the fertile crescent, or in biblical terms, the Whores of Babylon. Ancient Babylon, […]

The summer sky is dominated by a constellation named Scorpius, the scorpion. It has lots of bright stars in a long swooping curved shape like a fish hook. The brightest star in the line-up is a huge red one smack dab in the heart of the beast, named Antares. The scorpion is formidable. He’s hard […]

The constellation Taurus is one of the oldest and most famous of the sky-critters. There are indications that folks associated these stars with a bull all the way back to the copper age, which is really just the bronze age before the upgrade. But great starlore doesn’t typically happen all of a sudden because things […]

Springtime is about Virgo and has been for a very long time. Thousands of years ago this constellation was known to many as The Seed Furrow but it eventually evolved into a lovely young fertile maiden, as in “spring brings all the boys to the furrow” (wink wink). Not that thee shall be beyond slut-shaming, […]