There are eighty-eight officially recognised constellations, groups of stars that look like a particular shape such as an object, animal, or person, if you have a vivid imagination, after which they have been named. Of course, the stars in a Constellation have no connection with each other and may be close to or far away from other members of the theoretical group.

Some stars obdurately remain outside even the most fanciful of geometric imaginings or have come late to the constellation party, having only recently been discovered. An adjective coined in the late 19^th century to describe a star outside a constellation was sparsile. The most commonly seen sparsile star is the sun.