Rosy in the dawn,
brilliant in blue
or covered in black velvet,
it has stories to tell...
One day, the Sky God was putting constellations in the heavens, very carefully arranging each star. But the trickster Coyote got bored watching all this tedious work, so he grabbed a bag of stars and tossed it into the sky, scattering stars everywhere.
That’s why, according to this Native American legend told by University of Arizona anthropologist Jarita Holbrook, the stars look like they are in disarray.
The sky is an inspiration for literature, art and film, says Holbrook, who is in charge of cultural astronomy and storytelling projects in the United States for International Year of Astronomy 2009. “You have to remember, electricity is something fairly new, so people saw the sky in all its glory for thousands of years,” she says. “It was like going to the movies. It was the only game in town, so to speak.”
Housed in the vast theater of the night sky are legendary creatures and mythic figures, both godly and MORTAL—stars made of stars!
Professional storyteller Jordan Hill of Tucson has traveled the world gathering tales based on these constellations. He has even collaborated with NASA on stories of the solar eclipse and northern lights. “Often,” he says, “encoded in stories is our understanding of the world.”
When the stars get into a certain orientation, people make up a story about what’s happening in the sky, but that story is as much about the season and what people should be doing here on Earth, Hill says.
How Did Humans Use the Stars?
“When stars get to a certain place, that’s when you know you need to start planting your seeds because you know the rains are going to be coming pretty soon and you have to be ready,” he says.
“It’s far easier to remember things in the form of a story than it is a list of facts.”
Hill has also found that diverse cultures have almost identical structures in their stories. “It’s really exciting when I find that, but I find that most often with star stories,” he says. “It blows my mind.”
The Bears
Take one of the greatest constellations—Ursa Major, also known as the Big Dipper.
Greek myth says Zeus, king of the gods, fell in love with a beautiful, young huntress named Callisto. When his wife, Hera, learned of it, she was furious and in a fit of jealousy turned Callisto into a bear! (Ursa is the Greek word for bear.) One day, while wandering the forest, Callisto came upon a young hunter. Recognizing him as her son, Arcas, she rushed to greet him. But he didn’t recognize her and was about to kill her when Zeus intervened by turning Arcas into a bear.
The god grabbed them both by their tails, swung them over his head and sent them into the sky, which is how their tails got stretched out. They wander there as the Great Bear and Little Bear (Ursa Minor aka the Little Dipper). Can You Find Them on the Star Chart?
Native American stories also make that constellation into a bear. In one, a bear comes into a forest she’s never been to before. Wandering about, she doesn’t realize it’s haunted, until in the middle of the night the trees come to life and start moving around. The bear is so startled that she accidentally bumps into one. She freaks out and runs. The tree is kind of insulted—she didn’t even apologize! He goes chasing after the bear. He chases her all through the night.
Just before dawn, the tree remembers that as the sun rises he will be rooted in place, and he needs to get back to his spot. So he reaches out and manages, just with the tip of his branches, to grab hold of the bear by the tip of her tail. And he lifts her, spins her over his head and tosses her into the sky, which is why her tail gets stretched out.
The Summer Triangle
The Arabs believed that summer came on the wings of birds—Cygnus the swan, Aquila the eagle and Lyra the vulture—the three constellations that make up the highly visible Summer Triangle.
But the Japanese tell the tale of star-crossed lovers Shokujo (Vega, the brightest star in Lyra,) and Kengyu (Altair, its COUNTERPART in Aquila). Shokujo, a weaver for the gods, and Kengyu, a herdsman, lived on opposite sides of the Heavenly River, which we know as the Milky Way. Still, their parents wanted to separate them. The weaver was very good at her job and the herdsman was also very good, but when they were together, they didn’t get any work done. So they were condemned to live separated by the river, only meeting once a year on the seventh night of the seventh month when a bridge forms and the stars cross paths.
Perseus, Andromeda and Cassiopeia
According to the Greeks, King Acrisius of Seriphos heard a prophecy foretelling his death at the hands of his grandson. So he locked his daughter, Danae, and her infant son, Perseus, in a wooden chest that he set adrift at sea in the hopes they would perish. But the chest blew ashore the next day, and the two exiles made their home on the island of King Polydectes.
Polydectes fell in love with Danae, but couldn’t get near her because of Perseus’ protectiveness. To get him out of the way, Polydectes asked the boy to bring him the head of the fearsome snake-haired gorgon Medusa, whose gaze could turn people into solid stone. With the help of a cape of invisibility, winged sandals and a mirrored shield given him by the gods, Perseus beheaded Medusa. (He used the shield to look at Medusa, so he wouldn’t be turned to stone.)
On his way home, Perseus rescued Andromeda, the daughter of Cassiopeia, the legendary queen of Ethiopia who bragged she was more beautiful than Nereids, the sea nymph. As punishment for Cassiopeia’s vanity, Poseidon the Sea God sent a sea monster to ravage the coast of Ethiopia. The only way to APPEASE
Poseidon was to sacrifice Andromeda to the monster.
Finding the maiden chained to a rock, Perseus freed her and then slew Cetus. Perseus and Andromeda were later married.
Pegasus
As Perseus was flying home, carrying the head of Medusa, drops of the gorgon’s blood fell into the ocean.
It so happened that Medusa was once a beautiful woman who had been cursed for various reasons, and she and Poseidon had been in love. When the drops of blood touched the ocean, Poseidon realized they were Medusa’s and remembered his love for her. As a memorial to her, he gathered up the drops of her blood and the foam of the sea and mixed them together. From that sprang forth the Pegasus, the winged white horse.
Polaris, the North Star
At the edge of a dark forest in India lived a boy named Dhurva who longed to know his father. When he was old enough, his mother revealed that his father was a mighty king.
Dhurva traveled many days to see his father, and the king upon seeing the resemblance between them welcomed him with open arms and granted him whatever he wished. Dhurva said he only wanted to live in the palace and get to know his father. But his father’s wife, the queen— jealous and fearful upon seeing the affection between the two— threatened to leave the palace if Dhurva stayed. The king ordered Dhurva to go.
Dhurva returned to his mother in the forest, weeping. But his tears turn into a firm resolution—he dds not want to be like the king, who was weak despite all his external power. He asked his mother how to find inner strength and was told to search out Krishna, the Lotus-Eyed One, at the heart of the forest.
Deep in the forest where the trees are so ancient one can feel their power, Dhurva came across Narada, one of the seven sages of India, who advised him to sit down and pray. Fix your thoughts so firmly on finding the Lotus-Eyed One that nothing else exists, Narada said.
Dhurva does this and becomes so still that everything else moved around him. After centuries of meditation, Dhurva found the Lotus-Eyed One—in his own heart. A light erupted from him and there he remains to this day, shining brightly with everything moving around him. And so he became the North Star, which we know as Polaris.
Did you know the moon rises 50 minutes later and a little farther west each day of its cycle?
See it for yourself! Write your observations in a Moon Journal.
Look for Jupiter and its four bright moons this month. And check out the Perseid meteor shower Aug. 13-14.
For a cool calendar of celestial events, try www.seasky.org.
The Great World Wide Star Count happens Oct. 9-23. Find out how you can participate at www.windows.ucar.edu/starcount.
Get ready for Galilean Nights! Oct. 23-24! Amateur and professional astronomers all over the world will be pointing their telescopes at the same sights Galileo saw 400 years ago. Get more info at www.galileannights.org.
What do you see in the stars?
Draw in your own pictures.
Download a free Sky Wheel at http://keplar.nasa.gov/ed/skywheel. NASA’s Web site has tons of other great resources and activities, too.
Also, check out www.galileoscope.org. As part of IYA 2009, a team of astronomers, engineers and educators (in Tucson!) developed a high-quality 2-inch diameter telescope that you can buy for just $15 plus shipping.
Celestial Celebration
2009 is the International Year of Astronomy!
Around the globe, astronomers—professionals, amateurs and ordinary people who just like gazing at the heavens—are joining together to “rediscover their place in the universe.”
Lucky for us, there’s no better place to celebrate the skies than Arizona, which is, after all, the Astronomy Capital of the World! This is where the dwarf planet Pluto was first spotted in 1930. This is the home of noted amateur astronomer David Levy, who has discovered 22 comets. This is where much of the brainpower behind NASA’s amazing Mars exploration program resides.
“You’re told the moon is out at night and the sun rises in the east,” says Stephen Pompea, manager of science education at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory and U.S. project director for the International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA 2009). “Don’t take it for fact! Demonstrate it for yourself by looking.”
In fact, he points out, the moon is out during the day, too. And believe it or not, the sun only rises in the east two days a year—on the equinoxes!
For centuries, people believed that the Earth was the center of the universe. In 1609, Italian scientist Galileo Galilei, considered the father of modern science, created a telescope with 3x magnification. Based on his observations of the sun, moon and planets, he became the champion of the theory (first expressed by Nicolaus Copernicus half a century earlier) that Earth and the other planets circle the sun.
“Galileo looked at Jupiter many nights,” Pompea says.
IYA 2009, launched by UNESCO and the International Astronomical Union, commemorates the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s use of a telescope to study the sky. It also happens to be the 40th anniversary of the year humans first set foot on the moon.
“There’s so much more out there, so much left to discover,” says Ashley Carter, public relations director at the Arizona Science Center, which is hosting monthly events in honor of IYA 2009. “People forget science is all around them. They think of science in a laboratory being done by people in white lab coats.”
Science is creative, she says. “It gives motivation and aspiration to reach goals and find answers.”
Science leads to some pretty big thoughts, Pompea agrees. “The universe is very old—13 billion years. Life on Earth is less than 4 billion years old,” he says. “It’s important for children to understand that we inhabit a little planet called Earth that circles around a medium-size star called the sun. Thanks to people like Copernicus and Galileo, we’re not allowed to have that smugness that everything is centered around us.
“We’re all in this Earth together—that’s a pretty
eye-opening perspective.”
See Jordan Hill spinning his yarns at www.jordanhillstoryteller.com.
Visit your library or go online for more stories on the constellations!
Reach for the Stars
AZ Astronomy Resources
Tucson
Flandrau Science Center
Kitt Peak National Observatory
Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter
Steward Observatory
Tucson Amateur Astronomy Assoc.
Phoenix
Arizona Science Center
Phoenix Astronomical Society
Also
Lowell Observatory (Flagstaff)
Meteor Crater (Winslow)
Mt. Graham Observatory
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