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Well, today I found out how officially my local libary sucks. The total count of books it could supply me with on the subject of astronomy? one. A "Astronomy for Dummies", which whilst useful, i still feel like they were laughing at me.

Anywho, Onto the actual subject...

According to "Astronomy for Dummies" the first thing to really understand is what you are actually seeing, Light. Light which actually doesn't take "1000 lightyears" to reach earth, as lightyears is a term for distance, not time. The light from a star was noted for its brightness and position in the sky to be used for travelling. Then they made tales about them, they didn't wonder why they were there, what they really were, they weren't fearful of them, they sang about them. The Great Bear, The Demon Star , The dragon eating the sun, and the Man in the Moon, etc. These were then processed through the centuries, throught cultures, as the recognised the patterns in the stars.

Where before the dividing of the stars was simple, they cut up the sky by using; Ursa Major, the Great Bear; Cygnus, the Swan; Andromeda, the Chained Lady; and Perceus, the hero. Until now, where it is divided into 88 constellations, which includes all the stars up there. Although it is safe to assume that these constellations that we have created, actually have no relation in real life.

It should be noted that within each constellation the brightest star would be assigned the 'alpha' letter, which continued throughout the constellation; the second brightest being the 'beta', etc. The example i was given is that of Sirius, the dog star, within the constellation Canis Major, which means that Sirius is called the Alpha Canis Majoris. (the ending is changed to fit the latin.)

The following letters are the greek that should be used to signify the stars in order of brightness;