People have been looking up at the stars for thousands of years. Here’s where to start if you want to learn more about the night sky – from spotting easy-to-find constellations to using the best apps.
All human development, from large cities to small towns, shines light into the night sky.
Benny Ang/Flickr
People travel hundreds or thousands of miles and spend a fortune to see the night sky in all its splendor. But we are literally blocking out the cosmic beauty above our homes.
Southern Cross constellation in the night’s sky.
Wikimedia Commons
Warlpiri Elder Wanta Jampijinpa Pawu interprets the Southern Cross, not as a contested symbol of identity, but as a summons to unite First Nations and non-Indigenous people.
Cultures around the world call the Pleiades constellation ‘seven sisters’, even though we can only see six stars today. But things looked quite different 100,000 years ago
The Seven Sisters Uncirculated Coin.
Royal Australian Mint
Two new coins released by the Royal Australian Mint celebrate Indigenous astronomers, who have used the stars to map changing seasons, inform the behaviours of plants and animals, and encode Law.
As the Earth orbits the Sun, the Sun appears to move through the ancient constellations of the zodiac.
Tauʻolunga/Wikimedia Commons
Dark sky sites can inspire new generations of stargazers, but a better long-term solution would be connecting people with the night sky where they live.
The Milky Way: a pattern of stars, or a pattern of gaps?
Luke Busellato/Wikimedia Commons
Around the world and throughout history, we find remarkably similar constellations defined by disparate cultures, as well as strikingly similar narratives describing the relationships between them.
Yurri and Wanjel - the Gemini stars Castor and Pollux in the Wergaia traditions of western Victoria, Australia.
Stellarium/John Morieson and Alex Cherney
Many of the constellations we know in the night sky come from myths of the ancient Greeks. But similar stories are told by the oldest living cultures on Earth, including those of Australia.
All is not calm in the cosmos.
ESA/Hubble and NASA
Stargazing seems such a quiet, calm activity. But whether our eyes can see or not, those stars out there are in constant flux. Time-domain astronomy studies how cosmic objects change with time.
Star man: Belgian astronomers reportedly registered a new constellation for the singer.
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