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Registered Member #543
Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4992
Well, now, the constellations are more or less arbitary patterns of stars as seen from the Earth - arrangements of stars in which the Ancients believed they could see traced out in the sky the figures from their mythology - Orion, the Hunter, for example.
These patterns are no more than that: imaginary connections between usually the brighter stars, which have survived into modern atronomy as a way of mapping the heavens, and talking about the location of a star as seen from the Earth, so that it may be found by telescopes, and so on. The idea of constellations has no meaning except when viewed from the surface of our particular planet.
But a galaxy exists as a thing in itself, a dynamic system of stars, dust, gases, gravitational and magnetic fields that has nothing to do with the point of view of an observer on the surface of the Earth.
Registered Member #56
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:02AM
Location: Southern Califorina, USA
Posts: 2445
Like harry said, it is kind of an odd question, but pretty much all named constellations are made out of stars that in the milky way (the only exception I can think of would be constellations that have galaxies as one of their 'stars'), and likewise are much smaller than a galaxy.
Keep in mind that most all stars in in a galaxy, and that to the naked eye a galaxy looks exactly the same as a galaxy (just a dot).
Registered Member #27
Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 02:20AM
Location: Hyperborea
Posts: 2058
You need to explain what you mean by smaller. Angular size on the sky or the absolute volume the stars are contained in.
The smallest contellation is about 68 square degrees of the sky, the galaxies are smaller than that (3 square degrees for Andromeda). So in that sense all constellations are larger than the galaxies.
When it comes to absolute size, every contellation of stars contained in our galaxy will be smaller than a galaxy. So in that sense constellations can be smaller than galaxies.
Registered Member #95
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 04:57PM
Location: Norway
Posts: 1308
Absolutely, as opposed to relatively.
You're standing on a balcony with a mountain view. Seen from where you stand two mountain tops in the distance will appear close to each-other. You could just cover the distance between both with your thumb held in front of your face. On a table a few meters away are two pop cans. These appear to be equally far apart as the mountains, and you could also just cover their distance with your thumb. Of course, the actual distance between the mountains and pop cans is vastly different.
What Bjørn means with absolute size is that the actual distance in light-years between the stars in a constellation versus the diameter of a galaxy in light years.
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constellations and galaxies
