How do stars manage to create the same constellations multiple times?

Question

I don’t see a flair option for Astronomy…

But I just recently wondered how stars could line up perfectly to create an Orions belt or many other shapes. Not only that but how do constellations end up being formed more than once? Are we looking at the same stars?

In: Physics

Answer 1

Stars are just randomly placed in the sky. There is objectively no patterns to them and they do not form constillations. In fact because space is three dimensional the stars which might look close from our vantage point may be hundreds of light years apart. We only see constillations because we are looking for patterns. And we are so good at looking for patterns that we find patterns in any random scattered points in the sky. But if you look at different cultures you will notice that they have found different patterns and therefore have different constillations.