In ancient times, people were religious.As you probably know, countries
believed in gods, so they thought the gods used constellations to tell stories.
People started to create constellations in
their minds thinking of the gods, like:Orion, Aquarius and etc. This was before
Christ (BC).
They used
constellations in agriculture,to know the time to harvest crops, but they were
also used on navigation. Once they found Ursa Major they could find the
latitude. Ursa Major was one of the most important constellations at the time.
It also called big bear. Close to Ursa Major there is Ursa Minor, that is a
little bear. The biggest star in the Ursa Menior is the North Star. This
allowed ships to travel around the world, and discover new continents like
America.
The astrolabe was an
instrument that measured the distance of the stars based on the horizon. It was
invented by the ancient greek mathematican called Hipparchus, and originally it
was used to tell the time based on the sun, moon or stars. This is one of the
oldest measuring devices, used from about 120B.C to 1600 A.C. The name of the
astrolabe comes from the greek “to take a star”, because it used the stars to
work.
