by: Ashley Campbell
Imagine it is a warm summer night outside with not a cloud in the sky.As you walk outside and look up you see thousands of bright spots in the sky. Some of the spots form shapes with other bright spots and some of them stand out all by themselves. When I see a really bright star, I always wonder if it has a special name or if it is part of something larger. My goal for this story book is to learn some of those stories myself and to teach you all a story or two that you may not know. At the end of the storybook I would like to be able to look at a constellation in the sky and be able to tell the story behind it.
Constellations are commonly known
as a cluster of stars that are related to each other, forming a shape.
However,
the shapes that they do form were made up approximately 6,000 years ago
by
poets, farmers and sailors. The term constellation comes from the Latin
term "con" meaning together and "stella" meaning star. So constellation
essentially means a group of stars put together. Since the evolution of
astronomy as a science, constellations are now used to divide up
the sky into 88 different
areas.
The shapes or constellations are used like a "cheat sheet" to find
the stars that have formal names. Astronomers use the constellations
sort of
like we use road maps.
Stories about
constellations have been passed
down from
generation to generation. There are 88 modern constellations., meaning
that
there are at least 88 stories about constellations and when you add to
that the
stories from different cultures, the possibilities are endless. Even
though the
constellations are made up, the stories that go along with them are
often events that acutally occured.
I like this aspect because it allows for a little mystery and it also
allows
readers to see how vast people's imaginations really are in order for
them to apply a story to a figure in the sky. With so many
different cultures being represented in constellation stories it is
hard to
focus on just one. For this storybook I am going to focus on the Greek
stories about
constellations. Greek tales, I feel, are the more popular because most
of us
have heard their names before and we have heard most of the
stories. As I said earlier, I am hoping that i will be able to
tell stories about constellations that are visible to the human eye so
you can put the story with the constellation next time you go outside.
My
favorite kind of stories to read
are those that have some sort of narrator telling a story in the third
person
perspective. It is easier for me to pick out the moral or objective of
the
story if there is just one person telling it. For my storybook, I am
using a third person point of view to tell all of my stories. I
feel this will
work best with the stories I have picked out because they can be very
complex and hard to understand, at times. Listed below are the stories
that appear in this storybook and a short description of what you can
expect from each of them. I hope you enjoy reading these stories as
much as I did writing them. Happy reading!
Stories:
*
Hercules- The story of Hercules is not one that many often think
of. Hercules was not always the hero that everyone has thought to be.
Like many people in history, Hercules, had many trials he had to go
through before completing his life. this story follows Hercules on his
path of vicotory and defeate throught his life.
*Orion -orion's life is the perfect
example of "Better to have loved and lost, then to never have loved at
all." he was quite the ladie's man, but he could never find his
limits.Starting at birth he was given many advantages in life. Those
advantages eventually led to his down fall. This story describes the
many loves of Orion and how his lustful eye landed him among the stars.
*Cassiopeia
- Cassiopeia was a very proud and overbearing mother at times. She
possessed an extreme amount of confidence in her beauty, and in the
beauty of her daughter. Because of Cassiopeia's lack of control of her
tongue, her daughter was placed in a very dangerous situation. Like all
good stories, Cassiopeia's daughter was rescued by a handsome man.
*Callisto
- The story of Callisto is by far the most complex of all of the
stories in my storybook. this story is about Callisto, a woman who was
taken advantage of by a very powerful man. After "breaking" her vow,
she was sent away to live a life of sadness all alone. This story
follows Callisto thorugh the trials of her young life to her eternity
of happiness in the stars.
For more information on constellations visit these two websites. Wikipedia
and What
are Constellations?
* Image Information: "Bubble
Nebula" , by Chris Deforeit, Picture was taken on July 22, 2002