CONSTELLATIONS BY SEASON

the northern evening sky through the year: 28 constellations per the Yale Bright Star Catalogue, latitude 40° N, evenings near 9 pm

Built as a memo rather than a table: the thing worth hanging it up for reads across the room, with the full reference in smaller type below it.

Three sizes in one archive — from a sheet on the fridge to a poster on the wall.

Formats: A4 · A3 · A2
What you get: Print-ready PDFs, one per size, with every letterform converted to outlines — nothing to install, nothing to shift.
Subject: astronomy · beginners · reference · study

Stars, coordinates and magnitudes are from the Yale Bright Star Catalogue (BSC5, catalogue V/50, CDS). Selection: the constellation's brightest star is 2.5ᵐ or brighter and culminates above 10° from latitude 40° N. The season is when the constellation culminates near 9 pm; the date follows from right ascension. Farther south the constellations ride higher; nearer the pole, lower. Checked 2026-08-13.

ORION AND SCORPIUS NEVER MEET

In Greek myth the hunter Orion was killed by a scorpion, and the two were set on opposite sides of the sky. The myth recorded real geometry: Rigel and Antares stand eleven and a quarter hours of right ascension apart — almost exactly opposite.

So from latitude 40° N Rigel sets before Antares rises, and the other way round: not for one minute of the year are both stars above the horizon together. Their evening culminations fall in late January and mid July, nearly half a year apart.

On the sheet

Stars, coordinates and magnitudes are from the Yale Bright Star Catalogue (BSC5, catalogue V/50, CDS). Selection: the constellation's brightest star is 2.5ᵐ or brighter and culminates above 10° from latitude 40° N. The season is when the constellation culminates near 9 pm; the date follows from right ascension. Farther south the constellations ride higher; nearer the pole, lower. Checked 2026-08-13.
Colour carries meaning, but meaning never rests on colour alone — the sheet reads in black and white.
Nothing about how it was made: the sheet carries only what the reader needs.

Printing

Three sizes in the archive: A4 — 210×297 mm, A3 — 297×420 mm, A2 — 420×594 mm.
All text is converted to outlines. No fonts to install, and nothing shifts on another machine.
White background and sparing fills — it prints on a home printer without draining the cartridge.
Margins of at least 10 mm: a home printer cannot print to the edge.
No stroke thinner than 0.3 mm, so nothing disappears in print.

Why the numbers can be trusted. Every countable number here is computed from data rather than typed in, and the sheet must pass 8 independent checks before it is allowed to build — how many items there are, the order they come in, and the claim in the highlighted box itself. If one fails, there is no file.

CONSTELLATIONS BY SEASON

ORION AND SCORPIUS NEVER MEET

On the sheet

Printing

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