Question: Are constellations actually that shape or just the human mind likening them to shapes they know?

Monique Henson answered on 11 Nov 2015:

Great question! Constellations only look the way we see them from where we are in the Universe. If we were to travel away from Earth for a really long time and we looked at the sky again, then we’d see different constellations.

When we see stars in a constellation, that doesn’t mean that those stars are near to each other. It just means they look near to each other from where we’re standing.

As for whether those shapes are really there – it’s probably a mixture of them looking slightly like those shapes, and the human mind looking for things it recognises. People are really good at picking out patterns, so we’re good at finding shapes that we know in the sky.