RASC World Asterisms Project: 

An asterism is a star or stars that have been identified and named. The people of the world come from a variety of social, educational, and cultural backgrounds. This means that even though they are looking up at exactly the same stars that you are, they see different patterns than you. Even within your own culture there will be differences. People have used the sky as:

• A calendar, and/or
• A divination system, and/or
• A navigational tool, and/or
• A weather prediction system, and/or
• A place to honor:
  • Their deities
  • Their ancestors, or
  • Their culture.

This is a practice that continues to this day.

The World Asterisms Project is a living project started in June 2021 by the Inclusivity and Diversity Committee of the RASC as a celebration of the sky cultures of the world. It continues to grow as the process of naming the stars above is an ongoing process. It is also growing as ethnoastronomers and researchers investigate old records and interview elders and recover previously lost sky cultures. The World Asterisms Project has so far examined 597 of the world’s cultures and recorded over 17,800 asterisms and over 1,659 names of the Sun, Moon, and Planets. This includes 4,722 telescopic asterisms.

We are stewards of these records and are using the “Two Eyes Seeing” approach used by members of our Halifax Centre of the RASC in their ongoing partnership with the Mi’kmaq people to recover their sky lore: the shared perspectives of astronomers and knowledge keepers. We are doing our best to avoid exonyms and use the names the people of these cultures use for themselves. We identify the asterisms here and whenever possible direct people to representatives of the cultures involved for information on the sky stories or dream lines related to those asterisms.

This is a work in progress as we add new discoveries and update current ones. We have also created a World Asterisms Project Google Drive for researchers involved in this project as partners and supporters. In this drive we keep the current drafts, shared asterism files, and a “new” page which describes current work. If you are interested in joining our team, contact us and we can add you to the researchers who have access to those lists. If you have any questions, suggestions, or corrections, please contact us and we’d be happy to assist you. This information is being provided free to all, but we encourage you to donate to the RASC to support our work.

NOTE: The RASC website is currently in the process of being rebuilt and so the current WAP page dates back to late 2024. Our Google Drive is up to date, so if you would like to see the latest lists, please contact me at worldasterismsproject@rasc.ca.

Charles Ennis, President, Sunshine Coast Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada