My favorite area of the night sky
The first thing that I noticed once I moved to Gainesville, Florida was its night sky which was surprisingly clear of any major light pollution. With a population of around 140,000 people, Gainesville isn’t a large city by any means, yet I’m not accustomed to cities having such clear and pristine skies at night. It didn’t take long to discover the dark sky places around the city, and stargazing nights soon became a ritual. Whenever I go stargazing though, I spend a considerable amount of time staring at an area of the night sky — an area that has become my favorite over all these years of looking up. Why? you might ask. Well, because it tells a story — the story of Orion.
Orion, the hunter, stands on the banks of river Eridanus, along with his hunting dog, Canis Major. He seems to be ready for battle, protected with a shield and holding a club. It becomes obvious after looking at the scene — he’s about to hunt Taurus the bull, which seems to be ready to charge Orion in defense. It is the story of a seemingly intense battle for survival. Will the hunter succeed and earn his meal for the day, or will the bull maim the hunter and save itself?
The answer to this question is left to the imagination of the viewers, but the mere thought of using stars to tell stories baffles me. If you think about it though, it makes perfect sense — in a world where the paper wasn’t invented yet, the cosmos became the canvas, and human imagination brought out art in the form of a connect-the-dots puzzle. Imagine how many prehistoric kids might have stared at the cosmos in awe while their parents narrated this legendary story.
This is a story by the ancient Greeks, but other civilizations have their versions of the same. Some interpretations depict the hunter following Lepus the hare, a constellation found right below Orion. In Vedic India, the stars that make Orion were interpreted as Mriga the deer, or as Nataraja, the depiction of Shiva as the cosmic dancer. The Lakota Native Americans saw Orion as a Bison. In Polynesia, it represented the strings of a cat’s cradle, and some tribes visualized it as a hunting trap that fires arrows at the prey by itself. This list is surely not exhaustive, but what I want to convey is that human imagination can bring some meaning out of the most simple things, and while some imaginations have survived through word-of-mouth or texts, it’s solemn to wonder how many more stories must exist that we aren’t aware of, based on the same stars, but with different characters, that have been lost to the test of time. Only if we knew them all!
Do you enjoy seeing the night sky? What is your favorite thing about it? Have you ever interpreted the constellations in some other way? Tell me in the comments. I’ll start first!
