After the sun slipped behind the mountains, I witnessed a spectacle dazzling from my early childhood. I was looking up in awe at a celestial display brighter than a big city skyline. It was a stargazer's dream. I slowly rotated a full 360-degrees, realizing I'd just blurted out everything I knew about the constellations.
Some people use the stars for direction-finding.
I did some research. The sky contains 88 internationally recognized constellations. Two dozen constellations are visible at any time of the year. Stars twinkle in the night sky because of atmospheric turbulence, such as when a front passes through, and the flow of air is disturbed. To help understand the twinkling patterns in the nighttime sky, you first need to know the principles of movement, magnitude and orientation.