Observed on 9th of Jan 2021 in Newcastle Upon Tyne (UK) looking WSW at a little after Midnight.
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3 Answers
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If it was rather small, I suppose you were looking at the Pleiades, which is an open star cluster (not a constellation). Take a look at this web application: https://stellarium-web.org/ You can set a time and location and find constellations and other objects really easily.
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6$\begingroup$ Not a constellation indeed, but can be considered an asterism (en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterism_(astronomy) ) . The "mini dipper". $\endgroup$ Jan 10, 2021 at 11:39
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Yes, those are the Pleiades. The form corresponds exactly to the photo below:
(source: Star-Gazing - the disk below the Pleiades is Venus, this is a photo from April)
As @theWrongAlice says, they're not a constellation, but they are part of Taurus (the Bull).
answered Jan 9, 2021 at 17:18
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$\begingroup$ Is it just me, or does Glorfindel look like Alexander Armstrong? $\endgroup$– James KFeb 18, 2021 at 23:22
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In such situations, I find Astrometry.net particularly helpful. Feeding it your image, I got this result:
Of course, the stars Pleione, Sterope, and Taygeta are enough to identify the Pleiades.
While in this case it's fairly easy to identify the Pleiades by inspection alone and verify this, for less recognisable cases Astrometry.net is a very handy tool. They've got an online version, where you upload a photo and the recognition is done server-side, or you could install the app, either from repos or build from source.
