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Leo the Lion You can look at a calendar to check when spring will come. However, 2,000 years ago, people looked at the sky to check if spring was coming. They looked to the stars. A star is a huge, hot, bright ball of gases. These people were looking for a particular group of stars. Stars can be grouped together in sets to form a pattern. The pattern is called a constellation. These people were looking for a constellation known as Leo the Lion. This constellation got its name because the ancient Greeks and Romans thought that the stars formed the outline of a lion. This is one of the easiest constellations to identify. Leo’s head looks like a backward question mark. A star that forms one of Leo’s legs is one of the brightest stars in the night sky. If you watch this constellation, it appears to move slowly across the sky. This is true of all the constellations. However, the constellations are not really moving. We are. Earth’s rotation makes it seem as if the constellations are moving. Just think how trees can appear to move if you are spinning around in a forest. As Earth spins, Leo the Lion appears over the Northern Hemisphere at the beginning of spring. In other words, during the spring Earth is tilted so that the Northern Hemisphere faces this constellation in space. During the other seasons, Earth is tilted so that other constellations appear in the Northern Hemisphere. In summer, you can see Scorpio the Scorpion. In fall, you can spot Pegasus the Flying Horse. In winter, you can observe Taurus the Bull. That leaves only 84 more constellations to identify in the night sky. Discovery Education Science © 2007 Discovery Communications, LLC