The constellations we recognize today will be vastly different in a million years due to what astromers call “proper motion” of stars. This will transform our night sky, creating new constellations from stars that have shifted positions, presenting future astronomers with a completely new celestial map to study. Because of stellar motion, our current Star Catalogue will evolve, making the sky look different, but it will still be filled with stars, as I explain in my End of the Universe Explained article. No current constellation will remain intact. Remarkably, Earth will continue to have a North Star, despite the 26,000-year cyclical wobble of Earth’s poles. Vega served as the North Star 13,000 years ago and will do so again; over a million years, both Polaris and Vega will continue to reprise their roles in this cycle.
In the shadowed forests of the Late Carboniferous, long before mammals, birds, or even dinosaurs,
