question: Why is the "star shape" referred to as such? Aren't all stars just circles of light in the night sky?
comment: The Egyptian heiroglyphic for “star” was a five-pointed figure similar to the asterisk. It got into our culture from there.
passages: BULLET::::- One-third of the 1st-magnitude stars visible in the sky (seven of twenty-one) are in the so-called Winter Hexagon with Capella, Aldebaran, Rigel, Sirius, Procyon, and Pollux with 2nd-magnitude Castor, on the periphery, and Betelgeuse off-center. Although somewhat flattened, and thus more elliptical than circular, the figure is so large that it cannot be taken in all at once, thus making the lack of true circularity less noticeable. (The projection in the chart exaggerates the stretching.) Some prefer to regard it as a Heavenly 'G'.
   BULLET::::- Adding vertical lines to connect the limbs at the left and right in the main diagram of Hercules will complete the figure of the Butterfly.
  
  BULLET::::- Although hardly an ancient notion, it is easy to see why the Ice Cream Cone is sometimes applied to Boötes. It is even better known as the Kite.
  
  BULLET::::- The stars of Cassiopeia form a W which is often used as a nickname.
  
  Some asterisms may also be part of a constellation referring to the traditional figuring of the whole outline. For example, there are:
  
  BULLET::::- Orion's Belt/The Belt Of Orion
   Delta Cancri also marks the famous open star cluster Praesepe (or the Beehive Cluster, also known as Messier 44). In ancient times M44 was used as a weather gauge as the following Greek rhyme from Aratos' "Prognostica" reveals:
   These polygons are often seen in tiling patterns. The parametric angle α (degrees or radians) can be chosen to match internal angles of neighboring polygons in a tessellation pattern. Johannes Kepler in his 1619 work "Harmonices Mundi", including among other period tilings, nonperiodic tilings like that three regular pentagons, and a regular star pentagon (5.5.5.5/2) can fit around a vertex, and related to modern penrose tilings.
  
  Section::::Interiors of star polygons.
   BULLET::::- The Winter Triangle visible in the northern sky's winter and comprise the first magnitude stars Procyon, Betelgeuse and Sirius.
  
  Section::::Large or bright asterisms.:Constellation based asterisms.
  
  BULLET::::- A familiar asterism is the Big Dipper, Plough or Charles's Wain, which is composed of the seven brightest stars in Ursa Major. These stars delineate the Bear's hindquarters and exaggerated tail, or alternatively, the "handle" forming the upper outline of the bear's head and neck. With its longer tail, Ursa Minor hardly appears bearlike at all, and is widely known by its pseudonym, the Little Dipper.
   BULLET::::- For large spots the sizes depend on the differential rotation of the star, but there are some indications that large spots which give rise to light variations can survive for many years even in stars with differential rotation.
  
  Section::::Activity cycles.
   Coincidentally, the Chinese also associated these stars with battle armor, incorporating them into the larger asterism known as "Tien Pien", i.e., the Heavenly Casque (or Helmet).
  
  Section::::Features.
  
  Section::::Features.:Stars.
   In Gaia Data Release 2, a direct geometric parallax of was derived, corresponding to a distance of .
  
  Section::::Variability.
   Vivian E. Robson notes that many of the traditional constellations outside of the zodiac constellations occupy large degrees of arc and typically compass several of the tropical zodiac signs. Ptolemy referred to stars by reference to the anatomy or parts of the constellations in which they appeared; thus Arcturus he named the "right knee of Boötes". Most of the Western names of stars, such as Algol or Betelgeuse, are Arabic in origin. In 1603 the Augsburg lawyer-uranographer Johann Bayer introduced the current classificatory system for the brighter stars, in which stars are identified as belonging to their constellations by Greek letters, in (roughly) descending order of brightness; so that Regulus, brightest star in Leo, is called "α Leonis", the brightest star of the Lion.
   BULLET::::- The star with six (or less commonly five, sometimes seven) points is associated with law enforcement in the United States, and forms the basis of the sheriff's badge.
  
  Section::::Five-pointed stars.
  
  The five-pointed star, if drawn with points of equal length and angles of 36° at each point, is sometimes termed a golden five pointed star. If the colinear edges are joined together, a pentagram is produced, which is the simplest of the unicursal star polygons, and a symbol of mystical and magical significance.
   In 1840, the German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle (1812 - 1910) proposed that lower Lowitz arcs were produced as sun dogs are; that is, by sunlight refracting through hexagonal ice crystals. However, in the case of sun dogs, the columnar crystals are oriented vertically, whereas in the case of Lowitz arcs, Galle proposed, the crystals oscillated about their vertical axes.
   Asterisms range from simple shapes of just few stars to more complex collections of many bright stars. They are useful for people who are familiarizing themselves with the night sky. For example, the asterisms known as The Plough (Charles' Wain, the Big Dipper, etc.) comprises the seven brightest stars in the International Astronomical Union (IAU) recognised constellation Ursa Major. Another is the asterism of the Southern Cross, whose recognised constellation is Crux ("crux" is an area of the night sky in which the Southern Cross is located).
  
  Section::::Background of asterisms and constellations.
   BULLET::::- Where a line may be drawn between two sides, the region in which the line lies is treated as inside the figure. This is shown in the right hand illustration and commonly occurs when making a physical model.
  
  When the area of the polygon is calculated, each of these approaches yields a different answer.
  
  Section::::Star polygons in art and culture.
  
  Star polygons feature prominently in art and culture. Such polygons may or may not be regular but they are always highly symmetrical. Examples include:
   Other forms of Christmas stars exist, but are not to be confused with the original Herrnhut Moravian star. No matter how many points a star has, it has a symmetrical shape based on polyhedra. There are other stars with 20, 32, 50, 62 and 110 points that are commonly hand-made. The variety comes from various ways of forming the polyhedron that provides a base for the points—using an octagonal face instead of a square face, for example. The common original Herrnhut Moravian star becomes a 50-point star when the squares and triangles that normally make up the faces of the polyhedron become octagons and hexagons. This leaves a 4-sided trapezoidal hole in the corners of the faces which is then filled with an irregular four sided point. These 4-sided points form a "starburst" in the midst of an otherwise regular 26-point star.
   Nicolas Louis de Lacaille portrayed the constellations of Norma, Circinus and Triangulum Australe as a set square and ruler, a compass, and a surveyor's level respectively in a set of draughtsman's instruments in his 1756 map of the southern stars. Also depicting it as a surveyor's level, German Johann Bode gave it the alternate name of Libella in his "Uranographia".
   Section::::Features.:Stars.
   Triangulum Australe
  
  Triangulum Australe is a small constellation in the far Southern Celestial Hemisphere. Its name is Latin for "the southern triangle", which distinguishes it from Triangulum in the northern sky and is derived from the almost equilateral pattern of its three brightest stars. It was first depicted on a celestial globe as Triangulus Antarcticus by Petrus Plancius in 1589, and later with more accuracy and its current name by Johann Bayer in his 1603 "Uranometria". The French explorer and astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille charted and gave the brighter stars their Bayer designations in 1756.
   Furthermore, exploration by Europeans to other parts of the globe exposed them to stars unknown to them. Two astronomers particularly known for greatly expanding the number of southern constellations were Johann Bayer (1572–1625) and Nicolas Louis de Lacaille (1713–1762). Bayer had listed twelve figures made out of stars that were too far south for Ptolemy to have seen; Lacaille created 14 new groups, mostly for the area surrounding South Celestial Pole. Many of these proposed constellations have been formally accepted, but the rest have historically remained as asterisms.
   The term "mullet" or "molet" refers to a star with straight sides, typically having five or six points, 
  
  but may have any number of points specified in the blazon. If the number of points is not specified, five points are presumed in Gallo-British heraldry, and six points are presumed in German-Nordic heraldry.
  
  Unlike estoiles, mullets have straight (rather than wavy) rays and may have originally represented the rowel of a spur, rather than a celestial star. 
   BULLET::::- The Lozenge is a small diamond formed from three stars – Eltanin, Grumium, and Rastaban (Gamma, Xi, and Beta Draconis) – in the head of Draco and one – Iota Herculis – in the foot of Hercules.
   A drawing on the wall of the Lascaux caves in France has a graphical representation of the Pleiades open cluster of stars. This is dated from 33,000 to 10,000 years ago. Researcher Michael A. Rappenglueck has suggested that a panel in the same caves depicting a charging bison, a man with a bird's head and the head of a bird on top of a piece of wood, together may depict the summer triangle, which at the time was a circumpolar formation. Rappenglueck also discovered a drawing of the Northern Crown constellation in the cave of El Castillo (North of Spain), made in the same period as the Lascaux chart. 
   Component stars of asterisms are bright and mark out simple geometric shapes.
  
  BULLET::::- The Great Diamond consisting of Arcturus, Spica, Denebola, and Cor Caroli. An East-West line from Arcturus to Denebola forms an equilateral triangle with Cor Caroli to the North, and another with Spica to the South. The Arcturus, Regulus, Spica triangle is sometimes given the name Spring Triangle. Together these two triangles form the Diamond. Formally, the stars of the Diamond are in the constellations Boötes, Virgo, Leo, and Canes Venatici.
   Section::::History.
  
  Section::::History.:Development of the Greek Constellation.
  
  Argo Navis was long-known to Greek observers, who are believed to have derived it from Egypt around 1000 BC. For example, Plutarch identified Argo with the Egyptian constellation called the "Boat of Osiris." Although some academics theorized a Sumerian origin related to the Epic of Gilgamesh, this hypothesis has been rejected as there is no evidence that the Sumerians or other Mesopotamian culture considered these stars, or any portion of them, to form a vessel.
   In 1803 John Sims claimed Curtis had made a mistake in this attribution, and that; "this name was given from the remarkable likeness the front view of it has to a star of some of the orders of knight-hood; an appearance well expressed by JACQUIN's figure in the "Hortus Schoenbrunnensis""
   Other star patterns or groups called asterisms are not constellations per se but are used by observers to navigate the night sky. Asterisms may be several stars within a constellation, or they may share stars with more than one constellation. Examples of asterisms include the Pleiades and Hyades within the constellation Taurus and the False Cross split between the southern constellations Carina and Vela, or Venus' Mirror in the constellation of Orion.
  
  Section::::Terminology.
  
raw_presuppositions: Star shapes in our society should derive from circular stars.
raw_corrections: Star shapes in our society derive from the Egyptian hieroglyphic for stars.