Its vast bulk – and main asterism viewed in most European cultures per Greco-Roman antiquity as a distant pair of fishes connected by one cord each that join at an apex – are in the Northern celestial hemisphere.

The Sun passes directly overhead of the equator, on average, at approximately this point in the sky, at the March equinox.

M74 is a loosely wound (type Sc) spiral galaxy in Pisces, found at a distance of 30 million light years (redshift 0.0022).

In the first-millennium BC texts known as the Astronomical Diaries, part of the constellation was also called DU.NU.NU (Rikis-nu.mi, "the fish cord or ribbon").

In the Greek version according to Hyginus, Aphrodite and Eros while visiting Syria fled from the monster Typhon by leaping into the Euphrates River and transforming into fishes (Poeticon astronomicon 2.30, citing Diognetus Erythraeus).

[27] The Roman variant of the story has Venus and Cupid (counterparts for Aphrodite and Eros) carried away from this danger on the backs of two fishes (Ovid Fasti 2.457ff).

In 1754, the botanist and author John Hill proposed to sever a southern zone of Pisces as Testudo (the Turtle).

[34] 24 – 27 – YY(30) – 33 – 29 Psc.,[35] It would host a natural but quite faint asterism in which the star 20 Psc is the head of the turtle.

It was represented by Alpha, Delta, Epsilon, Zeta, Mu, Nu, and Xi Piscium.