He worked his way up, grouping stars into higher and higher magnitudes based on decreasing brightness. The hundreds of stars in the sixth magnitude were barely visible to the naked eye. We still classify stars by magnitude today, just a little more precisely than Hipparchus.
Massive stars burn brighter than smaller, dimmer ones.
Throughout the ages, stargazers from around the world identified shapes that groups of stars made in the sky, otherwise known as constellations. The Babylonians, American Indians, and Greeks named constellations visible in the Northern Hemisphere, including Ursa Major, The Big Bear. Some Greek legends say that USA Major is actually a maiden that the goddess Hera tuned into a bear out of jealousy. The history of astronomy in different cultures around the world will be one component of a three-day adult workshop at Montshire beginning Wednesday, July 7. Wednesday We are surrounded by thousands of stars that, from our perspective, are fixed in three-dimensional space.