Constellations for Today's Youth

Consider Cassiopeia, which depicts the mythological queen sitting in a chair. I believe that this constellation would be much more palatable to today’s youth if it were reoriented and renamed Handgun.... Likewise, Gemini, which portrays twin brothers Castor and Pollux, would be better served if it were transformed into Cell Phone.

Cell Phone, at least to my eyes, is very vividly discerneble in the photograph above. "If my constellation reformation is embraced by the scientific community," she adds helpfully, "I will supply others." It's a terrible idea, of course, proposed as a joke (although a few enraged internet commenters seem to feel otherwise; one protests, "This is a prime example of why we're stupider as the generations pass!").

It does, however, highlight an interesting fact. The constellations are what they are not, really, because of their visual structure, but because of their improbably long history. (As one character puts it in Jude the Obscure: "The social moulds civilization fits us into have no more relation to our actual shapes than the conventional shapes of the constellations have to real star patterns.") Many date to ancient Rome, where they were described by the astronomer Claudius Ptolemy (a Roman citizen, born in Egypt, who wrote in Greek); others go back to Sumerian civilization. The point of the constellations is that, even if you don't really see them, you can't change them. Other people got there first.