This list comes from Chris Dolan’s pages on the constellations at www.astro.wisc.edu/~dolan/ constellations/ constellations.html. The links on this page all go to his site where there is plenty of useful information about each constellation.

The constellations marked with an asterisk (a ‘star’: *) are constellations you should memorize. These constellations will be the ones to look for on observation assignments.

I have described each constellation by saying whether it is Ancient or Modern; Northern, Southern, or Zodiacal; and by whether it has any bright stars or not. The Modern constellations tend to be ones not easily found with the naked eye and were invented in order that every square degree of sky be covered with constellations. The Ancient constellations are those included by the astronomer Ptolemy in his famous book, the Almagest in 150 A.D. The Southern constellations are the ones which, in my opinion, are either difficult or impossible to see from northern mid-latitude locations such as Southern Maine. Northern and Zodiacal constellations can all be seen from southern Maine (at varying times of year). Zodiacal constellations, of course, are the constellations of the zodiac and mark the path of the Sun during the course of a year. Constellations labeled Bright contain one or more stars that are easy to locate. The ones labeled Dim are much harder to find as they contain no bright stars. My criteria here are vague and based partly on experience and partly on a quick survey of star maps. Notice that the Ancient constellations tend to coincide with the Bright constellations. Why, do you suppose, that might be?