February is almost here! In three weeks, Gallery of Myth will go live. In honor of that, I wanted to talk today about constellations.
By now, you’ve probably heard me talk about Gallery, and heard my usual line — that it’s “half fantasy adventure through the stars.” But what does that actually mean? Well . . .
Let’s take a step back. Did anyone else ever have a constellation map up on their wall as a kid? Or maybe in science class? I had one stuck to the ceiling above my bed. I remember that it had illustrations of the constellations, rather than just dots and lines. And it was a Northern Hemisphere sky map; I think it had the Milky Way running down the middle — because, even though we usually can’t see it from our cities and suburbs, that’s pretty much what the Milky Way does: arcs through the background near some of the most recognizable constellations, like the dippers or Cassiopeia.
Well, for the “fantasy adventure” part of Gallery of Myth, that star map is essentially the actual map. Through a series of accidents, the characters find themselves stuck in the sky, and to get home they must traverse the Milky Way until they get to the eagle constellation, Aquila. Along the way, they run into other constellations like Orion, Pegasus, and Cassiopeia herself.
At this point, the title Gallery of Myth might have become clear. A lot of our modern constellations are mythical beings, usually Greek ones. This isn’t true of all of them — there are some truly “modern” constellations named in recent centuries. But most of them have a long, long history with humankind.
I always liked astronomy as a kid, but really what I liked was the mythology of it — or the archaeo-astronomy of it (that is totally a real field! it studies how people in the past thought of the sky). It’s folklore and fairytales but with an extra sense of time and space (har har). And it gets really cool when you start digging into the constellations of other cultures. Books like the Ojibwe Sky Star Map Constellation Guide can literally open up a new world for amateur astronomers. The possibilities are endless (just like my puns today, apparently). So if ever you’re in need of a little inspiration, try looking up! 🙂
