88 Contellations, and a song about the Southern Cross

[nancylebov]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybJGN86L1Y0&ab_channel=TheLIUniverse

At about 4:00, they're talking about a project which produces big beautiful images of the 88 official constellations.

https://88constellations.com/

I thought it included a multicultural survey of how people identified the constellations, but I misunderstood. There were 88 constellations identified in the 1920s, and that's it.

I think a multicultural survey would be a worthy topic for understanding perception. What causes people to identify a star grouping as a constellation? Are constellations consistent across cultures? Is there overlap in the symbols?)

Northern hemisphere people tend to not know about the southern constellations. They mention the Southern Cross, which is the only one I've heard of.

There's a Crosby, Stills, and Nash song called "Southern Cross".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuLBhxZUkmU&ab_channel=GreatOldiesDJ

Lyrics: https://genius.com/Crosby-stills-and-nash-southern-cross-lyrics

I've been thinking a lot lately about people being haunted by ideals. That twist at the end can be taken straight, which makes it kind of nasty, but maybe the woman he's trying to forget is up against the same thing.

Just musically, it's a good song.

Comments

RE: Are constellations consistent across cultures?

[davidphilliposter]

In anime, "Subaru" is often the name of a character. in RE:Zero, it is the protagonist. It's the name, in Japanese, of the S̷o̷u̷t̷h̷e̷r̷n̷ C̷r̷o̷s̷s̷ Pleiades and the arrangement of the stars appears as the logo of the car company.

There is a Japanese festival based on the legend of Altair and Vega, Tanabata. (In more than one anime, the Japanese characters, speaking Japanese, call the stars "Altair" and "Vega" rather than their traditional Japanese names.) A legend of lovers who can only see each other once a year.

There was a planetarium show at the science museum in San Jose that pointed out the ancient Greeks had names for constellations that were too far south to be seen from Greece, that they got those names from Babylonian astronomers who could see them.

[madfilkentist]

The Chinese system of constellations is interesting. It gives me a sense that scholars devised it to satisfy the emperor, while Western constellations come more from "Doesn't that group of stars look like a bear?"

[nancylebov]

Thank you. That was the kind of thing I was looking for, though I suspect it wasn't just about the Emperor, it was also about satisfying a theory of symbolism.