Constellations Trivia
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This constellation trivia quiz has 99 free questions with answers and covers the sky from Ptolemy's 48 figures to the 88 regions the IAU fixed in 1930: the largest and smallest constellations, the zodiac and the thirteenth constellation the Sun sneaks through, the ship that was split into three, and the southern figures added by Bayer, Hevelius and Lacaille. There are questions on famous stars and where they live, on asterisms like the Big Dipper, the Summer Triangle and the Winter Hexagon, on the Greek myths behind Orion, Cassiopeia and the Great Bear, on the flags that carry the Southern Cross, and on the very different skies of Chinese and Aboriginal Australian tradition. It is built for stargazers, pub quiz hosts, science teachers and anyone who can find the Plough but has never been sure what a genitive is doing in a star name. Easy questions ask which constellation holds Sirius; the hard ones ask who really named Delphinus's two brightest stars. Every answer has been checked against a reliable reference and each question shows its citation once you have answered.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many constellations does the International Astronomical Union officially recognise?
88
By 1930 the whole sky had been carved into 88 tidy regions so that every star belongs to exactly one of them.
Q 02Which constellation is the largest of all, sprawling across roughly 1,303 square degrees of sky?
Hydra
Hydra, the water snake, covers 1,303 square degrees and stretches more than 100 degrees across the sky, yet has only one reasonably bright star, Alphard, 'the solitary one'.
Q 03Which constellation is the smallest of all by area?
Crux
Crux, the Southern Cross, covers just 68 square degrees; the ancient Greeks could see its stars and counted them as part of a neighbouring figure, until precession carried them below Europe's horizon.
Q 04Which 2nd-century astronomer listed 48 constellations, 12 of them the zodiac, in his Almagest?
Ptolemy
Ptolemy, working in Alexandria around AD 150, listed 48 constellations; later astronomers filled the gaps between his figures and mapped the far southern sky that never rose above his horizon.
Q 05Which ancient Greek constellation was later broken up into Carina, Puppis and Vela?
Argo Navis
Argo Navis, the Argonauts' ship, grew so unwieldy that an 18th-century French astronomer divided it into Carina (the keel), Puppis (the stern) and Vela (the sails); its brightest star, Canopus, now belongs to Carina.
Q 06The French astronomer Lacaille named 14 southern constellations in the 1750s mostly after what?
Scientific instruments
Scientific instruments such as the air pump, the furnace, the microscope and the pendulum clock fill his corner of the sky, a tribute to the tools of the Enlightenment rather than to old legends.
Q 07Which Cape Town landmark did a French astronomer honour with a constellation after charting the southern sky beside it?
Table Mountain
Table Mountain became the constellation Mensa, 'the table'; part of the Large Magellanic Cloud lies inside it, capping the stars much as the 'tablecloth' cloud caps the real mountain.
Q 08Whose 1603 atlas Uranometria, the first to cover the whole celestial sphere, introduced Greek-letter star labels?
Johann Bayer
Johann Bayer was an Augsburg lawyer, not a professional astronomer, yet the system from his 1603 Uranometria, lettering each constellation's stars roughly by brightness, is still in use four centuries later.
Q 09Navigators of which nationality charted the stars of 12 new southern constellations on a 1590s East Indies voyage?
Dutch
Dutch navigators Pieter Keyser and Frederick de Houtman mapped the southern stars on that voyage; Keyser died before the fleet got home, but his notes gave the sky Tucana the toucan and Volans the flying fish.
Q 10In a name like 'Alpha Centauri', what grammatical case of the constellation's Latin name follows the Greek letter?
Genitive
Genitive means Alpha Centauri is literally 'Alpha of the Centaur' and Alpha Tauri 'Alpha of the Bull'; Flamsteed numbers use the same possessive form.
Q 11Which 17th-century Gdańsk astronomer and brewer introduced Canes Venatici, Sextans and Leo Minor?
Johannes Hevelius
Johannes Hevelius, a Gdańsk brewer, charted ten new constellations, seven still in use, and kept measuring star positions by naked eye long after rivals such as Robert Hooke insisted on telescopic sights.
Q 12Scutum, the Shield, was named in honour of which monarch's victory at the 1683 Battle of Vienna?
John III Sobieski of Poland
John III Sobieski of Poland had helped the constellation's inventor rebuild his observatory after a fire in 1679, and the astronomer repaid him in 1684 with Scutum Sobiescianum, Sobieski's Shield.
Q 13Which faint constellation got its name because the astronomer who created it said only the sharp-eyed could see it?
Q 21Which red supergiant on Orion's shoulder faded sharply in the 'Great Dimming' of 2019–20?
Betelgeuse
Betelgeuse faded because it threw off a huge mass of its own gas, which cooled into a veil of dust and hid part of the star; it is expected to explode as a supernova within about 100,000 years.
Q 22Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka form which famous part of the hunter Orion?
The belt
Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka make up Orion's Belt; extend their line to the south-east and it points straight at Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky.
Q 23The Orion Nebula, one of the brightest nebulae in the sky, lies in which part of the hunter's figure?
The sword
The Orion Nebula (M42) is the middle 'star' of Orion's Sword, hanging below the Belt; at around 1,300 light-years it is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth.
Lynx
Lynx covers more sky than Gemini, yet it has no star brighter than third magnitude, so its patch of the northern sky looks almost empty.
Q 14Which 'serpent-bearer' constellation does the Sun cross each year without being a zodiac sign?
Ophiuchus
Ophiuchus hosts the Sun for about 18 days from the end of November, yet astrology's twelve signs are equal 30-degree slices that ignore the real constellation boundaries.
Q 15The serpent-bearer constellation is identified with which Greek healer whose staff symbolises medicine?
Asclepius
Asclepius, son of Apollo, was said to have learned to raise the dead by watching one snake revive another with a herb; Zeus struck him down with a thunderbolt, then set him among the stars to appease Apollo.
Q 16Which constellation is uniquely split into two parts, Caput in the west and Cauda in the east?
Serpens
Serpens is split into Serpens Caput, the head, and Serpens Cauda, the tail, because the man gripping the snake stands between them; the tail half holds the Eagle Nebula and its Pillars of Creation.
Q 17Which is the only zodiac sign represented by an inanimate object?
Libra
Libra, the scales, was once seen as the claws of neighbouring Scorpius; its two brightest stars keep Arabic names meaning 'southern claw' (Zubenelgenubi) and 'northern claw' (Zubeneschamali).
Q 18Into which constellation has the 'First Point of Aries' drifted due to precession?
Pisces
The vernal equinox point has slid westward into Pisces, moving about one degree every 72 years; the name was fixed over 2,000 years ago when the equinox really lay in the Ram.
Q 19The Crab Nebula, remnant of a supernova seen from Earth in 1054, lies in which zodiac constellation?
Taurus
The Crab Nebula (M1) lies near Zeta Tauri in Taurus, which also holds the Pleiades and the Hyades; Chinese records say the 1054 supernova was visible by day for about three weeks.
Q 20Which of the celestial Twins is actually brighter, though its sibling got the 'Alpha' designation in 1603?
Pollux
Pollux outshines Castor by nearly half a magnitude; in the usual telling of the myth he was also the immortal twin, who asked Zeus to let him share that gift with his fallen brother.
Q 24In Greek myth, which creature killed Orion, which is why its constellation never shares the sky with the hunter?
A scorpion
A scorpion, sent in one telling by the Earth after Orion boasted he could kill any wild beast, and in another by Artemis; the two now sit on opposite sides of the sky, so one rises as the other sets.
Q 25Which red supergiant marks the heart of Scorpius?
Antares
Antares, often translated as 'rival of Mars', is named for its strong reddish colour, which resembles the planet's; it is a red supergiant about 550 light-years away.
Q 26Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, belongs to which constellation?
Canis Major
Sirius, the 'Dog Star', lies just 8.6 light-years away in Canis Major, the Greater Dog, pictured chasing Lepus the Hare at the heels of Orion.
Q 27Which asterism joins Sirius, Procyon, Capella, Aldebaran and Rigel around Betelgeuse?
The Winter Hexagon
The Winter Hexagon needs a sixth corner, Pollux, to close the ring; the smaller Winter Triangle sits inside it, sharing Sirius and Procyon and using Betelgeuse as its third point.
Q 28Polaris, the North Star, is the brightest star of which northern constellation?
Ursa Minor
Ursa Minor's Polaris sits at the tip of the Little Dipper's handle, and despite its fame it is not even among the 40 brightest stars in the sky.
Q 29Which star in Draco, the Dragon, was the pole star nearly 5,000 years ago, when Egypt's pyramids were being built?
Thuban
Thuban, Alpha Draconis, sat almost exactly at the pole in the pyramid age; Earth's axis wobbles in a 26,000-year cycle, so the honour moves on, and Vega takes the job in about 12,000 years.
Q 30The Big Dipper is not a constellation at all but an asterism inside which one?
Ursa Major
Ursa Major, the Great Bear, uses the Dipper as its rump and tail; unusually for a star pattern, five of the seven stars really are neighbours, drifting through space together as one group.