I love the constellations for themselves and use them constantly to find
my way around the sky, whether for naked eye observing or telescopic.
My first interest in the night sky was simply to learn the
constellations. Where else can you see anything that's changed so
little throughout human history? That being said, I don't have a DEEP
interest, and only have a superficial knowledge of the major players in
most of the ancient mythology involved. It's sort of fun to know the
old stories from ancient history and other cultures, but it's seldom
written about much anymore, and the mythology isn't referred to in day
to day literature nearly as much as in times past. When you read older
popular astronomy books by Garrett Serviss and others from around the
turn of the last century, much more time is spent on mythology, and much
more mythological knowledge is assumed on the part of his readers. For
better or worse, I'd suppose we've replaced all that with gossip about
popular celebrities or something.
Marty