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 the 88 by area?
Crux
Crux, the Southern Cross, covers just 68 square degrees; the ancient Greeks counted its stars as part of Centaurus before precession carried them below Europe's horizon.
Q 04How many constellations did Ptolemy list in the Almagest in the 2nd century AD, 12 of them the zodiac?
48
48: the 12 of the zodiac, 21 to the north and 15 to the south; all but one survive today, the exception being a giant ship carved up in the 18th century.
Q 05Which of Ptolemy's 48 constellations was later broken up into Carina, Puppis and Vela?
Argo Navis
Argo Navis, the Argonauts' ship, is the only Ptolemaic constellation no longer recognised; Lacaille split it in 1752 into Carina (keel), Puppis (stern) and Vela (sails), and its brightest star Canopus now belongs to Carina.
Q 06Which French astronomer introduced 14 southern constellations named mostly after scientific instruments in the 1750s?
Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille
Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille, observing from the Cape of Good Hope in 1751-52, added Antlia the air pump, Fornax the furnace, Microscopium, Telescopium and Horologium the clock, and catalogued nearly 10,000 southern stars.
Q 07Which feature on Earth is the only one to have a constellation named after it?
Table Mountain
Table Mountain, overlooking Cape Town where Lacaille observed in 1751-52, gave its Latin name to Mensa, the faintest constellation, whose brightest star is only magnitude 5.1.
Q 08Whose 1603 atlas Uranometria, the first to cover the whole celestial sphere, introduced Greek-letter star labels?
Johann Bayer
Johann Bayer, an Augsburg lawyer, published Uranometria in 1603 with stars lettered roughly by brightness, Alpha through Omega; it also imported the 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
All 12 were charted on the first Dutch voyage to the East Indies in 1595-97; they include Pavo the peacock, Tucana the toucan, Chamaeleon, Volans the flying fish and Apus the bird of paradise.
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 (1611-87), who ran his family's Gdańsk brewery, charted ten new constellations in his 1690 star atlas; seven of them, including Lacerta, remain among the 88.
Q 12Scutum, the Shield, was named in honour of which monarch's victory at the 1683 Battle of Vienna?
John III Sobieski of Poland
Hevelius named it Scutum Sobiescianum, Sobieski's Shield, in 1684 to honour John III Sobieski of Poland, whose army broke the Ottoman siege of Vienna the previous year.
Q 13Which faint constellation between Ursa Major and Auriga did Hevelius name after an animal?
Lynx
Q 21Which red supergiant on Orion's shoulder dimmed by about a factor of three in the 'Great Dimming' of 2019–20?
Betelgeuse
Betelgeuse takes its name from Arabic for 'the hand of al-Jawza', and 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
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, hangs from 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, introduced by Hevelius in 1687, fills an otherwise empty patch between Ursa Major and Auriga; he said only the lynx-eyed could make it out, as none of its stars beats third magnitude.
Q 14Which 'serpent-bearer' constellation does the Sun cross each year without being a zodiac sign?
Ophiuchus
The Sun crosses Ophiuchus for about three weeks, from 30 November to 18 December, yet astrology's twelve 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
Asclepius, son of Apollo, reputedly learned to raise the dead after watching one snake revive another with herbs; Zeus struck him down with a thunderbolt to keep humans mortal, then set him among the stars.
Q 16Which constellation is uniquely split into two parts, Caput in the west and Cauda in the east?
Serpens
Serpens is divided into Serpens Caput, the head, and Serpens Cauda, the tail, by Ophiuchus, the man holding the snake; 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
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, an orange giant of magnitude 1.1, outshines Castor at 1.6, yet Bayer lettered Castor Alpha Geminorum in 1603; Pollux also hosts a confirmed exoplanet, Pollux b.
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 by Artemis and Leto, in one version, 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 marks the heart of Scorpius?
Antares
Antares, 'rival of Ares', earned the name because its reddish hue can be mistaken for Mars when the planet passes nearby, roughly every two years; 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, also called the Winter Circle, joins Rigel, Aldebaran, Capella, Pollux, Procyon and Sirius; it dominates northern evening skies from about December to March, with Betelgeuse near its centre.
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 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
Thuban, Alpha Draconis, sat nearest the pole around 2750 BC; Earth's axis wobbles in a 26,000-year cycle, so the honour rotates, and 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
Ursa Major, the Great Bear, is the third-largest constellation; its seven famous Dipper stars have been seen as a wagon, a bear and even a saucepan in different countries.