Stories from the Stars

 

People have always searched for patterns in the night sky and told stories about what they see. Lions, crabs, scorpions, centaurs, bulls... Apart from the astrological zodiac, there are other well-known constellations. Orion, the great hunter with his brilliant belt, is a stand-out. Zeus put him up among the stars after he was killed by a scorpion and you'll note that Orion is never visible at the same time as Scorpius. Zeus was a busy god. He'd placed the seven daughters of Atlas up in the sky so Orion couldn't rape them. They are the Pleiades, the Seven Sisters, and Orion pursues them still.

We in the West grew up with the Greek and Roman legends about most of the known constellations, but people – ordinary people living in different places around the world – had been watching the stars for thousands of years. It's well known that sailors used the stars to navigate but farmers watched the skies for clues of seasonal events. For instance, when Sirius rose in the morning sky in mid-July, ancient Egyptians knew the Nile would soon flood. It's reminiscent of Anne McCaffrey's Pern series, where thread would start to fall when the Red Star was visible through the eye stone.

Here in the Southern Hemisphere we can see many (but not all) of the same constellations that are seen in the North. We can't see the Big Dipper, for instance. Those we can see are upside down from a Northerner's point of view, as is the Moon.

The Australian indigenous tribes, like their counterparts in other countries, had legends about how the constellations were formed and surprisingly, there are uncanny resemblances between star legends in different cultures.

Orion in the Northern Hemisphere

Take Orion, which is as prominent in our sky as it is in the north. In one aboriginal myth, the belt of Orion is three bothers sitting in a canoe. They're in the sky for breaking tribal law. But other tribes see Orion as an aboriginal warrior who is pursuing the seven sisters, in a striking parallel to the Greek myth. This is not the only overlap. There are similarities in the origin of constellations like Aquila and Gemini – the stories in this article in The Conversation are well worth your time and are illustrated with images of how we Australians see the constellations. MyModernMet is a great source for the Western legends about constellations.

We can't see the Big Dipper down here in the south and in the north people can't see Crux – better known as the Southern Cross. But that wasn't always true. Crux was visible in the Northern Hemisphere five thousand years ago. The Greeks recorded it as part of the Centaurus constellation. The precession of the equinoxes gradually lowered the stars below the European horizon until they were re-discovered by voyagers in the middle ages.

According to aboriginal legend, the distinctive lozenge shape of the four main stars of Crux are said to represent a shovel-nosed ray. The two pointers (Alpha and Beta Centauri) are two boys who went out fishing where they shouldn't. The ray took their fishing lines and towed them out to sea and up into the sky. So, these stars are an object lesson to boys – don't fish where you're not supposed to.

The Sky Emu

 Although most constellations are decided upon by drawing lines between stars, the aboriginal people had a notable exception.  That's the sky emu. This huge creature sprawls across the Milky Way. Its head is the Coal Sack nebula, a dark cloud next to Crux and its neck, body and legs follow the dark clouds obscuring some of the Milky Way's length.

Plenty of science fiction stories stem from myths and legends. Gods and goddesses feature in early episodes of Star Trek and Stargate is based on Egyptian mythology and the Orion constellation. Do you know of any others?

* By en:User:Rayd8 - en-wp, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5444580

 * By Bruno Gilli/ESO - http://www.eso.org/public/images/milkyway/, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11657991