Is SOL system part of a Constellation?

reply to post by Unity_99


I'm not sure what you said, but the stars are moving around relative to each other, and at a relatively slow (on human scale) rate -- but they do certainly move. For example, the sister stars of our Sun (the stars born in the same stellar nursery as our Sun), are most likely not very close to the Sun anymore. The Sun and her sisters have all moved their separate ways over the past 4.5 million years.

They are almost certainly in this part of the galaxy, but are most likely scattered around relatively far from the Sun.

We are not "in any constellation" since constellations are fantasy relationships of how people have seen and grouped stars in OUR sky in ancient times.

In reality, stars "belonging" to a constellation may have no relationship to each other whatsoever, it solely depends on the location and perspective where someone sees stars on the sky and then groups them together. Say, because certain stars with a little fantasy form the the shape of a bear, or a snake, or a bird/swan etc.

Insofar it doesn't make any sense to say "we are in the constellation of Cygnus".... The stars in Cygnus are only "part of Cygnus" because by pure randomness we see a bunch of stars on the sky which may look like a bird with wings.

For the claim that all/most stars in a constellation are part of rather close groups of stars I want to see evidence.

Some "constellations" can span a LARGE area on the sky, relatively seen, just saying.

Canis Major, for example consists of stars which are anywhere from 8 LY (Srius) to 3000+ LY away, this just by spending 1minute in Stellarium. In how far has Sirius a relationship to those stars 3000+ more LYs away?

There CAN not be a relationship of stars in constellations BUT a "mythological" relationship..when people came up with constellations they obviously had no idea about the "real" distance between those stars. If there are relationships that some stars in a constellation really belong to a cluster of close stars then it's pure coincidence.

JayDub113

The stars we see are in "our neighborhood" , and the universe is so very much more vast than what we see.

Sure the "picture view" of constellations is man-made, but Orion is a group of stars, most of them quite close together. So is the aforementioned Pleaides.

ALL stars we see (measured on the size of the universe)...are "in our neighborhood", if you will.

Let me check quickly...the farthest star we can see is 16.000 LY away, our galaxy (milky way) is 120.000 LY in diameter. So..ALL stars we see are actually only a very small fraction/neighborhood of our own milky way. ("Stars" as in single stars we can see, not being in another galaxy).

reply to post by Ophiuchus 13


i didnt expect you come with this post

it reminds me of the last part of Cloud Atlas when Zachry told stories to Children.
iirc, he pointed to one of the constellations where this earth is located.

different life experience with different 'earth' = different myth = different religions = different methods to 'return home'?

peace.