The Sun gives us light and warmth. North and south of the equator, when the Sun is low in the sky, the days become shorter and cooler, and winter comes. Winter is a reminder that, without the Sun, there would be only darkness and freezing cold. So to the ancients, the Sun was a glorious and good god.
Different peoples had different images of the Sun god. The great eye of Ra represented the Sun god of the ancient Egyptians. Ra was considered the nation's protector. This warm and tranquil "Sun-being" was drawn in Europe during the Middle Ages.
This fierce dragon gliding beneath the fiery Sun is from eighteenth-century China. The Moon is much dimmer than the Sun, but its light at night is cool and helpful. In myths, the Moon is usually pictured as a gentle female. To the ancient Greeks, she was a beautiful maiden called Selene or Artemis. To the Egyptians, she was Isis. As it circles Earth, the Moon changes its appearance, going from thin crescent to full and back to crescent each month.
Ancient calendars were based on this monthly cycle, and twelve of these monthly cycles made up the cycle of the seasons. It therefore became very important to watch each month for the first sign of the new moon. In fact, both month and Monday come from the word moon.
From day to day and from night to night, the Sun and Moon change their positions against the stars in the sky. So do five bright, star like objects that we call planets, from the Greek word for "wanderers." This is a view of brilliant Venus and dim Mercury as they line up at sunset with a crescent moon. Venus is the brightest planet in the sky and is named for the goddess of beauty.
Mercury is the fastest-moving planet and is named after the quick-footed messenger of the gods. The ancient Babylonians watched the planets move across the sky and gave them the names of gods. The Greeks and Romans copied the Babylonians in this, and we use the Roman names to this day. Mars is named after the god of war; and Saturn, after the god of agriculture.
The second brightest planet in the sky, Jupiter, was named for the chief god. Jupiter is not as bright as Venus, but it shines all night, while Venus appears only in the evening or at dawn. In modern times, people have found new planets that are too far away for the ancients to have seen. These planets have been given names from mythology, too.
Beyond ringed Saturn is Uranus, named for the god of the sky, who was Saturn's father. Farther still is Neptune, a sea-green planet named for the god of the sea. Beyond Neptune is Pluto, named for the god of the underworld because it is so far from the light of the Sun.
Every so often, something unusual happens in the sky: the Sun or Moon is eclipsed and hidden from our view. The Sun is eclipsed because the Moon moves in front of it and hides its light.
During a lunar eclipse, the Moon's bright face is turned a dusky red as it slips into Earth's shadow. Ancient people didn't know these causes, so they invented causes of their own. Some thought the Sun and Moon were chased by wolves, dragons, or other monsters that caught up with them now and then. Here the Hindu dragon Rahu causes a solar eclipse as he tries to swallow the Sun.
Of course, the Sun and Moon have always come back from their eclipses. And they will continue to do so for billions of years, even though according to Norse myths, at world's end a giant wolf will finally swallow the Sun.
Comets appear in the sky now and then. They are hazy objects with long tails. With a little imagination, they might look like the heads of mourning women with long, streaming hair--and in fact, the word comet comes from the Greek word for "hair." Sometimes comets look like swords, so people had several reasons to think of them as unpleasant omens. It's no wonder, then, that most people thought comets were
messages sent by the gods, warning of war, plague, and destruction.
People would pray or ring church bells in order to try to ward off the evil. But evil always came when there were comets in the sky. Of course, evil always came when comets were not in the sky, too--but people somehow didn't notice that. When you look at the stars, you may imagine that they form patterns. Some of these patterns are triangles, crosses, or squares. Some are shaped like a W. Some form wiggly lines. Two bright stars might be close together and appear to be related when viewed from Earth.
Ancient people imagined many shapes in the sky, including even people and animals. These shapes made it easier to locate the stars. A star might be in the "tail of the scorpion" or in the "head of the hunter." These patterns are called constellations, a word that comes from two Latin words which basically mean "stars together." The constellations were given names, many of them in Latin. The ancients also created stories about these imaginary figures in the sky.
The Sun, Moon, and planets each pass through the same constellations as they make a large circle in the sky. This circle was divided into twelve constellations, so that the Sun took one month to go through each. Most of the constellations were pictured as animals, so the band in which the planets move is known as the zodiac, which means "circle of animals."
In this thirteenth-century painting, celebrating the month of May, the Sun moves from the constellation Taurus (the Bull) into Gemini (the Twins), while Venus, the love goddess, watches over the people on Earth from her blue chariot.
Some constellations in the Northern Hemisphere never set. One of these, Ursa Major (the Great Bear), contains the Big Dipper. Sailors in old times noticed that Ursa Major was always in the northern sky. This meant that they could look for it and always tell which direction was north. Thanks to the Dipper, sailors could voyage out of sight of land and find their way home.
We know that both ancient and modern cultures
have seen figures in the constellations. Sometimes these figures are similar. Babylonians as well as ancient Mongols saw the Milky Way as a seam sewn in the two halves of heaven. And several cultures from different times and places-the Sumerians, Vikings, and some American Indians--believed the Milky Way was a bridge between Earth and the sky for the dead. But most cultures differ in their reading of the stars. The Inca Indians, for instance, interpreted the dark clouds of the Milky Way, rather than the stars, and saw in them animals such as a bird, fox, llama, toad, and serpent.
To the Norsemen, it was a huge spike driven through the universe around which the heavens revolved. To the Mongols, it was the Golden Peg, a stake that kept the heavens from whirling apart. The Chinese likened it to an emperor, the chief star that ruled the others.
In India, it was the place where a holy young prince faithfully meditated. "It" is the Pole Star, that stable star in the north around which all others seem to revolve.
As shown here, the two stars at the end of the Big Dipper's bowl point toward the Pole Star. But, in reality, there has not been just one Pole Star. Because Earth's axis wobbles a bit, various stars have been the Pole Star: Alderamin, Deneb, Vega, Thuban, and our current Pole Star, Polaris. And, of course, during those years, there have been periods when there was no star exactly to the north.
People talk about objects in the sky in different ways. Astronomers talk about the skies in familiar ways. But astrologers talk about the skies in ways that are less familiar. The practice of astrology, dating from ancient times, is to work out methods for predicting the future by using the position of the planets in the zodiac.
Even today, many newspapers carry a horoscope for those who seek advice from the stars. Astronomers, who use the methods and tools of modern science, are skeptical about astrology. Yet many people believe it to be true, just as ancient peoples found their stories of the skies to be true. So history shows us that while we are still uncovering secrets about the universe, one thing remains certain: our endless desire to make sense out of the objects above and around us.
Different peoples had different images of the Sun god. The great eye of Ra represented the Sun god of the ancient Egyptians. Ra was considered the nation's protector. This warm and tranquil "Sun-being" was drawn in Europe during the Middle Ages.This fierce dragon gliding beneath the fiery Sun is from eighteenth-century China. The Moon is much dimmer than the Sun, but its light at night is cool and helpful. In myths, the Moon is usually pictured as a gentle female. To the ancient Greeks, she was a beautiful maiden called Selene or Artemis. To the Egyptians, she was Isis. As it circles Earth, the Moon changes its appearance, going from thin crescent to full and back to crescent each month.
Ancient calendars were based on this monthly cycle, and twelve of these monthly cycles made up the cycle of the seasons. It therefore became very important to watch each month for the first sign of the new moon. In fact, both month and Monday come from the word moon.
From day to day and from night to night, the Sun and Moon change their positions against the stars in the sky. So do five bright, star like objects that we call planets, from the Greek word for "wanderers." This is a view of brilliant Venus and dim Mercury as they line up at sunset with a crescent moon. Venus is the brightest planet in the sky and is named for the goddess of beauty.
Mercury is the fastest-moving planet and is named after the quick-footed messenger of the gods. The ancient Babylonians watched the planets move across the sky and gave them the names of gods. The Greeks and Romans copied the Babylonians in this, and we use the Roman names to this day. Mars is named after the god of war; and Saturn, after the god of agriculture.
The second brightest planet in the sky, Jupiter, was named for the chief god. Jupiter is not as bright as Venus, but it shines all night, while Venus appears only in the evening or at dawn. In modern times, people have found new planets that are too far away for the ancients to have seen. These planets have been given names from mythology, too.
Beyond ringed Saturn is Uranus, named for the god of the sky, who was Saturn's father. Farther still is Neptune, a sea-green planet named for the god of the sea. Beyond Neptune is Pluto, named for the god of the underworld because it is so far from the light of the Sun.
Every so often, something unusual happens in the sky: the Sun or Moon is eclipsed and hidden from our view. The Sun is eclipsed because the Moon moves in front of it and hides its light.
During a lunar eclipse, the Moon's bright face is turned a dusky red as it slips into Earth's shadow. Ancient people didn't know these causes, so they invented causes of their own. Some thought the Sun and Moon were chased by wolves, dragons, or other monsters that caught up with them now and then. Here the Hindu dragon Rahu causes a solar eclipse as he tries to swallow the Sun.
Of course, the Sun and Moon have always come back from their eclipses. And they will continue to do so for billions of years, even though according to Norse myths, at world's end a giant wolf will finally swallow the Sun.
Comets appear in the sky now and then. They are hazy objects with long tails. With a little imagination, they might look like the heads of mourning women with long, streaming hair--and in fact, the word comet comes from the Greek word for "hair." Sometimes comets look like swords, so people had several reasons to think of them as unpleasant omens. It's no wonder, then, that most people thought comets were
messages sent by the gods, warning of war, plague, and destruction.People would pray or ring church bells in order to try to ward off the evil. But evil always came when there were comets in the sky. Of course, evil always came when comets were not in the sky, too--but people somehow didn't notice that. When you look at the stars, you may imagine that they form patterns. Some of these patterns are triangles, crosses, or squares. Some are shaped like a W. Some form wiggly lines. Two bright stars might be close together and appear to be related when viewed from Earth.
Ancient people imagined many shapes in the sky, including even people and animals. These shapes made it easier to locate the stars. A star might be in the "tail of the scorpion" or in the "head of the hunter." These patterns are called constellations, a word that comes from two Latin words which basically mean "stars together." The constellations were given names, many of them in Latin. The ancients also created stories about these imaginary figures in the sky.
The Sun, Moon, and planets each pass through the same constellations as they make a large circle in the sky. This circle was divided into twelve constellations, so that the Sun took one month to go through each. Most of the constellations were pictured as animals, so the band in which the planets move is known as the zodiac, which means "circle of animals."
In this thirteenth-century painting, celebrating the month of May, the Sun moves from the constellation Taurus (the Bull) into Gemini (the Twins), while Venus, the love goddess, watches over the people on Earth from her blue chariot.
Some constellations in the Northern Hemisphere never set. One of these, Ursa Major (the Great Bear), contains the Big Dipper. Sailors in old times noticed that Ursa Major was always in the northern sky. This meant that they could look for it and always tell which direction was north. Thanks to the Dipper, sailors could voyage out of sight of land and find their way home.
We know that both ancient and modern cultures
have seen figures in the constellations. Sometimes these figures are similar. Babylonians as well as ancient Mongols saw the Milky Way as a seam sewn in the two halves of heaven. And several cultures from different times and places-the Sumerians, Vikings, and some American Indians--believed the Milky Way was a bridge between Earth and the sky for the dead. But most cultures differ in their reading of the stars. The Inca Indians, for instance, interpreted the dark clouds of the Milky Way, rather than the stars, and saw in them animals such as a bird, fox, llama, toad, and serpent.To the Norsemen, it was a huge spike driven through the universe around which the heavens revolved. To the Mongols, it was the Golden Peg, a stake that kept the heavens from whirling apart. The Chinese likened it to an emperor, the chief star that ruled the others.
In India, it was the place where a holy young prince faithfully meditated. "It" is the Pole Star, that stable star in the north around which all others seem to revolve.
As shown here, the two stars at the end of the Big Dipper's bowl point toward the Pole Star. But, in reality, there has not been just one Pole Star. Because Earth's axis wobbles a bit, various stars have been the Pole Star: Alderamin, Deneb, Vega, Thuban, and our current Pole Star, Polaris. And, of course, during those years, there have been periods when there was no star exactly to the north.
People talk about objects in the sky in different ways. Astronomers talk about the skies in familiar ways. But astrologers talk about the skies in ways that are less familiar. The practice of astrology, dating from ancient times, is to work out methods for predicting the future by using the position of the planets in the zodiac.
Even today, many newspapers carry a horoscope for those who seek advice from the stars. Astronomers, who use the methods and tools of modern science, are skeptical about astrology. Yet many people believe it to be true, just as ancient peoples found their stories of the skies to be true. So history shows us that while we are still uncovering secrets about the universe, one thing remains certain: our endless desire to make sense out of the objects above and around us.
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