About Asterisms

Asterisms is a small interactive project designed to help people learn the patterns of the night sky by reconstructing them - rather than reading about them. You're shown a real star field and asked to connect the stars into the hidden shape yourself; the reveal that follows is the payoff.

A constellation is one of the 88 regions of the sky officially defined by the International Astronomical Union. An asterism - like the Big Dipper or the Summer Triangle - is a recognizable star pattern that isn't itself one of those 88 regions. Asterisms teaches both, from real astronomical data (see Sources), not invented facts.

The idea behind active pattern recognition is simple: if you've traced Orion's belt and shoulders here, you're far more likely to recognize it the next time you actually look up. That real-world stargazing connection - what's visible tonight, from where you are - is the direction this project is headed in next.

Asterisms is not a scientifically comprehensive astronomy reference - it's a small, honestly-sourced game. Where we don't have reliable data for something (like a constellation's mythology), we leave it out rather than make it up.

Read “Vastness” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1885).