Week of Aug. 30 - Sept. 5, 2026
Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! That's what Dorothy and her friends were worried about in "The Wizard of Oz," but you'll find none of them in the night sky.
Understandably, beginning stargazers quickly become frustrated because they cannot see in the sky the images they find portrayed on celestial maps. It's always wise to keep in mind the words of my former boss: "The constellations look no more like their namesakes than the George Washington Bridge looks like the Father of our Country."
As you'll read quite frequently in these articles, I recommend forgetting about these images; instead, create your own. These we call "asterisms," groups of stars we connect in our imaginations to create pictures.
Two of the most famous asterisms are the Big and Little Dippers, each resembling a rectangular bowl attached to a bent handle. It's much easier, however, to create simpler pictures; over the years I've found many geometrical figures, letters of the alphabet, and even numbers among the stars.
Low in the eastern sky after dark these early September evenings, you'll find a group of four equally bright stars that form an almost perfect square. It represents the abdomen of Pegasus, the flying horse from ancient Greek mythology, but you'll most likely never see that. This area is known instead to modern skywatchers as the Great Square of Pegasus, and once you find it, it'll be hard ever to miss again.
To the lower right of the square lies another geometrical figure. It's rather faint and supposedly forms one of the fishes of Pisces, but it's more easily recognized as a small circle of stars.
Connected to the lower left of the Square of Pegasus are two strings of stars that form a long V or, as one might imagine, a cornucopia. This represents Andromeda, the daughter of Cassiopeia and love interest of Perseus, who rode the winged horse Pegasus to save her from a horrible sea monster. But I'm sure you'll agree a cornucopia is much easier to see!
To her left you'll find an easy group of five stars in a zig-zag pattern. These are the stars of Cassiopeia, and they form an almost perfect letter W in the northeastern sky.
And all the way to the right side of the eastern sky lies another letter: Y. This is a rather tough one, but it lies in the middle of Aquarius, the water-bearer, a constellation I've never been able to make out.
It's not that tough to create others from the thousands of stars visible on a clear night. When I was a kid, a few friends and I used to make up our own images in the sky and give them silly Latin-sounding names. For example, the Square of Pegasus looked like an elevator, so we called it "Boxus Ascendum" or "Boxus Descendum," depending on whether it was rising or setting. And the zig-zag of Cassiopeia reminded us of an escalator, so we called it "Starius Movium."
OK, so I was a bit of a nerd, but I learned my way around the night sky and had fun doing so. You can as well!
Visit Dennis Mammana at dennismammana.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
An asterism is a group of stars that a skywatcher can connect in their imagination to form an image.
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