On seeing a chart of the Southern Hemisphere constellations, the Lick Observatory astronomer Heber Doust Curtis is reputed to have declared: “It looks like somebody’s attic!”.
While it’s true that the southern constellations include such technological relics as an air pump, a chemical furnace and a pendulum clock, there are also exotic animals such as a peacock, a bird of paradise and a dorado chasing a flying fish— not to mention the oak tree that was planted by Edmond Halley to commemorate King Charles ll, only to be later felled by a Frenchman.
Before the first European seafarers ventured around the tip of Africa to open trade routes to India and the Far East, the sky around the south celestial pole was a blank slate for Western astronomers. The 48 Greek constellations in Ptolemy’s book the Almagest of 150 AD went only as far south as Centaurus and Argo Navis. Beyond that lay the celestial equivalent of terra incognita, beneath the horizon for European observers.
lan Ridpath is a veteran astronomy writer and editor of The Antiquarian. Find out more about the history of the constellations on his website at
