P N Shankar does research in fluid mechanics at the National Aerospace Laboratories. His other interests include music, sports, science and reading of an omnivorous character. 

B S Shylaja obtained her PhD from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics. She is currently associated with Bangalore Association for Science Education, which administers the Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium in Bangalore. Her work involves teaching and research, besides popularising astronomy.

If you are unfamiliar with the night sky and you look at it on a really clear night, away from the city lights, you are bound to be dazzled and overwhelmed by the apparently innumerable stars that are visible. To the novice it would seem impossible to bring order and understanding to this apparently random profusion of stars of different colours and brightness. In fact, this is exactly how it must have seemed to the ancients. Yet, in not one but a number of geographically distant civilizations, order was found in the night sky and in surprisingly similar ways. Our purpose here is to introduce the reader to the night sky so that he or she, too, can make sense of this rich and beautiful visual field.

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Address for Correspondence
P N Shankar
 CTFD Division, NAL 
Bangalore 560 017, India.