what are constellations?

The first thing you need to know is that constellations are not real. The constellations are totally imaginary things which, poets, farmers and astronomers have made up over the past 6000 years. The real purpose of constellations are to identify the stars, you can get alot more info if you check this site out. www.asto.wisc.edu/~dolan/constellations/extra/constellations.html

They are all formations that people have come up with while looking at the sky a long time ago. They looked up and said "Hey, don't those stars look like they make a lion?" Then Leo the Lion was built. I've done my fair share of star gazing though, and I don't think that they really look like that they are claiming to though lol... Like the lion, I always thought it looked like a slipper, that's how I am able to spot it. And with sagitarius, I always see it as a teapot and so on. I'm a bit weird, but hey... it's what I see. I've got a bunch of astronomy books and things around here though, and they've got some nice maps of the night sky in them which helped me a lot when I first started searching for the different constellations. I also have a telescope which I've used to see some pretty cool things like the moon up close and nebulas.