This constellation trivia quiz has 50 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 50 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
The water snake is more than 100 degrees long but has only one reasonably bright star, Alphard, whose name means 'the solitary one'.
Q 03Which constellation is the smallest by area, yet one of the southern sky's most recognisable?
Crux
The Southern Cross covers just 68 square degrees, and the ancient Greeks knew its stars only as part of a neighbouring constellation before precession dropped them below Europe's horizon.
Q 04How many constellations did Ptolemy list in the Almagest in the 2nd century AD?
48
All but one of the figures survive today; the exception, a giant ship, was carved up in the 18th century.
Q 05Which ancient constellation, the ship of the Argonauts, was broken up into Carina, Puppis and Vela?
Argo Navis
It is the only one of Ptolemy's 48 constellations no longer recognised as a single figure, and its brightest star Canopus now belongs to Carina, the keel.
Q 06Which French astronomer introduced 14 southern constellations named mostly after scientific instruments in the 1750s?
Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille
He gave the southern sky an air pump, a furnace, a microscope, a telescope and a pendulum clock, and catalogued roughly 10,000 stars while he was at it.
Q 07Mensa is the only constellation named after a geographical feature on Earth. Which one?
Table Mountain
It commemorates the flat-topped mountain overlooking Cape Town where its creator set up his telescope, and it is also the faintest of all 88 constellations.
Q 08Whose 1603 atlas Uranometria first covered the whole celestial sphere and introduced Greek-letter star labels?
Johann Bayer
He was a lawyer by profession, and his atlas also imported twelve brand-new southern constellations charted by Dutch navigators a few years earlier.
Q 09How many new southern constellations, from Keyser and de Houtman's observations, appeared in the 1603 Uranometria?
12
They include a peacock, a toucan, a chameleon, a flying fish and a bird of paradise, all creatures the sailors had encountered on their voyages to the East Indies.
Q 10In a name like 'Alpha Centauri', what grammatical case of the constellation's Latin name follows the Greek letter?
Genitive
So Alpha Centauri literally means 'Alpha of the Centaur', and Alpha Tauri is '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
He described ten new constellations in all, seven of which are still in use, and his famous Jopen beer gave its name to a street in Gdańsk.
Q 12Scutum, the Shield, was named in honour of which monarch's victory at the 1683 Battle of Vienna?
John III Sobieski of Poland
It was first called Scutum Sobiescianum, Sobieski's Shield, and it is the only modern constellation that honours a real historical event.
Q 13Which faint northern constellation was named after a sharp-eyed animal, as only such eyes could make it out?
Lynx
Q 21Which red supergiant on Orion's shoulder dimmed by about a factor of three in the 'Great Dimming' of 2019-20?
Betelgeuse
The name comes from Arabic for 'the hand of al-Jawza', and the star is expected to explode as a supernova sometime within the next 100,000 years.
Q 22Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka form which famous part of the hunter Orion?
The belt
Extend the line of the three stars to the south-east and it points straight at the brightest star in the night sky.
Q 23The Orion Nebula, one of the brightest nebulae in the sky, hangs from which part of the hunter's figure?
The sword
At around 1,300 light-years away it is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth, and it looks like a fuzzy 'star' to the naked eye.
It fills an otherwise empty patch between Ursa Major and Auriga, and none of its stars is brighter than about third magnitude.
Q 14Which 'serpent-bearer' constellation does the Sun cross each year without being a zodiac sign?
Ophiuchus
The Sun spends about three weeks there from late November to mid-December, but the twelve astrological signs are equal 30-degree slices that ignore constellation boundaries entirely.
Q 15The serpent-bearer constellation is identified with which Greek healer whose staff symbolises medicine?
Asclepius
Legend says he learned to bring the dead back to life after watching one snake revive another with herbs, and Zeus struck him down to keep humans mortal.
Q 16Which constellation is uniquely split into two parts, Caput in the west and Cauda in the east?
Serpens
The head and tail are separated by the man holding the snake, and the tail section contains the Eagle Nebula, home of the Pillars of Creation.
Q 17Which is the only zodiac sign represented by an inanimate object?
Libra
The scales were once seen as the claws of neighbouring Scorpius, and its two brightest stars are still named 'southern claw' and 'northern claw' in Arabic.
Q 18Into which constellation has the 'First Point of Aries' drifted due to precession?
Pisces
The name was fixed over 2,000 years ago when the equinox really was in the Ram; the point creeps westward by about one degree every 72 years.
Q 19The Crab Nebula, remnant of a supernova seen from Earth in 1054, lies in which zodiac constellation?
Taurus
The same constellation holds the Pleiades and the Hyades, and Michael Rappenglück has argued the Bull is even painted on the cave walls at Lascaux.
Q 20Which of the celestial Twins is actually brighter, though its sibling got the 'Alpha' designation in 1603?
Pollux
The lettering mix-up happened because the atlas author did not carefully check which twin was brighter; the orange giant also has a confirmed exoplanet.
Q 24In Greek myth, which creature killed Orion, so its constellation never shares the sky with the hunter?
A scorpion
One version has Artemis and Leto sending the beast after Orion boasted he would kill every animal on Earth; as one rises in the east, the other sets in the west.
Q 25Which red supergiant at the heart of Scorpius has a name meaning 'rival of Mars'?
Antares
It earned the name because its reddish hue can be mistaken for the planet when Mars passes nearby, which happens roughly every two years.
Q 26Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, belongs to which constellation?
Canis Major
The 'Dog Star' is only 8.6 light-years away, and the Greater Dog is pictured chasing Lepus the Hare at the heels of Orion.
Q 27Which giant asterism links Rigel, Aldebaran, Capella, Procyon, Sirius and one of the Twins?
The Winter Hexagon
Also called the Winter Circle, it dominates northern evening skies from about December to March, and the red shoulder star of Orion sits roughly at its centre.
Q 28Polaris, the North Star, is the brightest star of which constellation?
Ursa Minor
It sits at the tip of the Little Dipper's handle, and despite its fame it is only about the 47th-brightest star in the sky.
Q 29Which star in the Dragon was the pole star around 2750 BC, when the Egyptian pyramids were being built?
Thuban
Earth's axis wobbles in a 26,000-year cycle, so the honour rotates: Vega gets the job around 14,000 AD.
Q 30The Big Dipper is not a constellation at all but an asterism inside which one?
Ursa Major
The Great Bear is the third-largest constellation, and its seven famous stars have been seen as a wagon, a bear and even a saucepan in different countries.