[dghughes]

I think they may mean because star patterns are not fixed so it never existed in that form at that time. Constellations as imagined by humans change surprisingly quickly but to humans and our short lifespan they seem to be forever.

[SamBorick]

That's not accurate. Star movements are on the order of mili-arcseconds per year. So around 1 arcsecond per star in a random direction over the last thousand years. Constellations would be different, but close enough that we could recognize.

I don't understand why people in this thread think is so unreasonable that a culture saw a new star in the sky 1/4 the brightness of the moon for 3 months, and somebody bothered to carve it on a rock.

https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/45256

[krisoft]

> I don't understand why people in this thread think is so unreasonable that a culture saw a new star in the sky 1/4 the brightness of the moon for 3 months, and somebody bothered to carve it on a rock.

I think that is reasonable. That is not the question.

The question is, would they have associated that part of the sky with a scorpion?

Stars on the sky are natural and people all around the world see them. But "constellations" are human made groupings. Their names, and even which stars are part of one constellation vs the other is culture dependent.

Your people might see an oxen carriage in one part of the sky, but if there is very little or no contact between our peoples mine might see a bear. And you might describe a particularly bright star as the yoke of the carriage, while my people would describe it as the feet of the bear pattern we see. Same stars, different patterns imagined into them, and different names for the pattern. Are you with me so far?

Now the problem is that the Hohokam petroglyph displays a scorpion. And scorpion is an animal which we in this day and age associate with the part of the sky where this supernova was. But did people of that age also see a scorpion when they looked up at that part of the sky?

Just as a concrete example read this part of the wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorpius#Culture

"Javanese people of Indonesia call this constellation Banyakangrem ("the brooded swan") or Kalapa Doyong ("leaning coconut tree")[14] due to the shape similarity. In Hawaii, Scorpius is known as the demigod Maui's Fishhook"

In traditional Chinese naming the same area of the sky would be called "Heart", "Room" and "Tail" of the "Azure Dragon of the East": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorpius_in_Chinese_astronomy

The question is not how much the stars physically drifted, but how much cultural recognition of star patterns have drifted.

[1-more]

> but close enough that we could recognize.

A fun thing about star movement is that you can only see six stars in the Pleiades, but there are seven there. There are I guess a bunch of myths about there being seven of something and then one of them getting chased away. A fun theory is that right around when modern humans emerged, we made a nice story about that cluster of seven stars. Then as the stars moved so that two of them look like just one together, we independently made up stories of why there were only six left all around the world. https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.09170

This could be one of those things that's like "did you know Easter was a pagan godess" and it's total bullshit and actually only the Greeks have a six-were-once-seven myth. But maybe it's real and that's nice.

[jcims]

I bought a large telescope a couple of years ago and the first month was out for a few hours every night paying close attention to the sky.

It's amazing how quickly your mind develops a map of what's there. Planets take on this odd motion/3d characteristic in your mind because they are very clearly moving against the backdrop. The orbital ecliptic of the planets become obvious and their mean flow towards the horizon reveals your latitude clearly and gives you this odd existential perspective on which you can visualize your latitude on Earth and its inherent spherical nature. You feel the spaceship we're on.

All of this with just stuff that you see every night.

A sudden bright light that is sixteen times brighter than Venus is going to catch everyone's attention. It's going to be unmistakable. People would have noticed the extra light cast on the ground and would have walked out of their homes to see what is going on. Everyone would have been talking about it.

[krisoft]

> You feel the spaceship we're on.

That sounds wonderful.

> People would have noticed the extra light cast on the ground and would have walked out of their homes to see what is going on. Everyone would have been talking about it.

Absolutely. But that is not the question. The question is if the Hohokam petroglyph is depicting that phenomenon. And the evidence for that is simply weak. See more in this article: https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/did-ancient-ameri...