Wrenched Orion—Part 1

I wrote recently about how the stars appear to be points of light scattered on a distant sphere above us. Our eye perceives this phenomenon as if the stars are all the same (great) distance from us, when, in fact, their distance varies. As a result, the constellations appear to us to be two-dimensional planar figures, when they are really three-dimensional objects.

The two-dimensional shape we perceive is a result of viewing a constellation from only one point in space: Earth. If we could move to another point in space, the constellation would appear very different.

Let's consider a simple example. Suppose we had an imaginary constellation of eight stars arranged in a way that they formed the corners of a perfect cube. Here's how a three-dimensional cube is represented:

From a particular point in space eight stars might look like this:

If we used our imaginations (as the ancients did, to create the constellations), we might connect the stars (dots) and see this: It's a cube!

But we might also imagine these eight stars (from this same location in space) to form an object like this:

or even this:

Depending on our culture, we could discern many different objects from these eight stars, depending on how we imagine them to be connected.

But it gets even more fascinating. Suppose we were able to travel vast distances through space. Our perspective of the “cubic” arrangement of these eight stars would change. What if we were to travel to a location where we viewed the cube face-on. It would look like this:

where each of the four stars is hiding another one behind it. 

How the civilizations at this location would perceive this “cubic” constellation, we can only guess. But it's a reminder that the constellations we see have their three-dimensional stars arranged in a pattern that is unique to us, at our location in space.

More on Orion next time...