ASTERISM

Asterism

In astronomy, an asterism is a pattern of stars recognized on Earth's night sky. It may form part of an official constellation, or be composed of stars from more than one. Like constellations, asterisms are in most cases composed of stars which, while they are visible in the same general direction, are not physically related, often being at significantly different distances from Earth. The mostly simple shapes and few stars make these patterns easy to identify, and thus particularly useful to those learning to familiarize themselves with the night sky.

The above text is a snippet from Wikipedia: Asterism (astronomy)
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asterism

Noun

  1. A small group of stars that forms a visible pattern but is not an official constellation.
    The Big Dipper, Summer Triangle, and Orion's Belt are asterisms.
  2. A rarely used typographical symbol (⁂, three asterisks arranged in a triangle), used to call attention to a passage or to separate subchapters in a book.
  3. A star-shaped figure exhibited by some crystals by reflected light (as in a star sapphire) or by transmitted light (as in some mica).


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: asterism
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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