Looking at the stars and “seeing” a great bear or a mighty hunter has sparked people’s imaginations all through history.
Cultures as far from one another as the Mayans, the Egyptians, and the Chinese all “invented” constellations, and though they had no idea of each others’ existence, they sometimes invented the same ones! Constellations are groups of stars that form a familiar pattern, such as a bear, a lion, or a scorpion. The stars we see are all in the Milky Way and exist light-years apart, but here on Earth, we see them as a set.
