Starlight of the Past

Around four years ago, hydrogen slammed together deep in space to form helium. Released from that
violent process of fusion were photons, which since then have travelled through the vacuum of space;
entered our solar system’s heliopause boundary; passed the Kuiper Belt, and the orbits of Neptune, Uranus,
Saturn, Jupiter, Mars; before hurtling into our atmosphere. If you happen to gaze up at the night sky, those
photons might just complete their journey in the cells of your eyes. You would see Alpha Centauri, one of
the closest and brightest stars to our Earth. It is among one of the six thousand other stars that your unaided
eyes can see at any one time. All are between four to four thousand light-years away – that was when the
Ancient Greeks began documenting the stars!

The stars haven’t changed much over the last four thousand years, but our sky certainly has. Since the
invention of automated street lights in the 19th century, artificial light has been fogging the night sky like
steam from a shower. Light pollution is a persistent issue in many major cities, including here in Sydney. I
remember reading a newspaper article about the 1994 blackout in Los Angles. I found it incredulous that
most of LA’s residents had never seen the Milky Way until waking up that morning. But, in my backyard,
the Milky way river has since too dried up. At night, I must squint to make out its fragile banks, which too
are slowly crumbling into the murky sky.

It was less than two years ago when I saw my first pristine night sky. I was on a school hike in Bangadilly
National Park, a two-hour drive south from Sydney. We camped in a grassy glade sheltered by dense
sclerophyll forests on three sides and a river to our north. It was a moonless night. Absent from clouds, the
moist spring air was listless and frigid. I gazed up, enthralled to see the ethereal southern night sky dome
across my field of view; almost like a colossal cave chamber, gently illuminated by strobing glow worms
that hung from its ceiling. I stood outside my tent, sweeping the embellished sky with my binoculars. The
torrent of the Milky Way had returned, gushing north to south across the sky. In the west was the
constellation Orion – you can’t miss him when he takes up a quarter of the sky – and high in the east was the
majestic and aptly named constellation, Crux, with its two pointer stars.

After gazing at the sky, you might ask: How do you locate stars in such as cluttered sky?

For thousands of years, objects, animals, and godly figures were conjured by joining the stars and other
celestial features. Aboriginal tribes circulated the story of the emu in the sky, trapped forever above the land
after killing a woman. The emu, which can still be spotted in the dark dust bands of the Milky Way, was an
important creator spirit in aboriginal culture. Currently, eighty-eight modern constellations stretch our
luminous universe, though many of those have lasted generations through folklore. In one Greek mythology
version, Orion – best-seen trekking north-west of the southern hemisphere with his two trusty hunting dogs:
Canis Major and Canis Minor – was a giant hunter who was chased and killed by a scorpion. To this day,
Orion is still chased across the sky; club in one hand, bow in another. Orion was also intertwined into
Egyptian, Hungarian, Scandinavian, and Aztec mythologies that date back past tenth century BCE.

Without stars and tools like sextants, explorers would not have been voyaging as they did before the advent
of GPS. Even astronauts of the Apollo 11, the epitome of technological advancements in the 20th century,
still relied on stars to guide their spacecraft. In 1915, the esteemed explorer, Ernest Shackleton, successfully
sailed with his crew in lifeboats (after his ship, Endurance, got trapped and crushed in ice) 1287 kilometres
from Elephant island in Antarctica to the South Shetland Islands. He completed this feat only navigating
with a sextant and the stars or sun. Sextants are still used in some ships today with catalogues of known
angles between the horizon and stars.

Since exploring our globe with the aid of stars, we are now at the forefront of exploring the universe, and it
is only going to surge. Stars are now more central than ever. Light pollution, unlike many other
contaminants, can be easily reversed and there are now solutions. Many countries are preserving our night
sky by establishing Dark Sky Parks, like the one in Warrumbungle National Park, or by switching to more
efficient lighting. I still have hope that the stars and our constellations won’t become myths of their own.

Reflection Statement
Stars are of universal relevance around the world – the architecture of customary stories and art. For the
majority of our modern generation, the stars are no longer a significant in connecting to nature, but a banal
motif for excellence and hope. Although I had studied astronomy, I was admittedly oblivious to the cultural
significance of stars, and its purpose in our current society. Catriona Menzies-Pike’s discursive, The Long
Run, and Geraldine Brooks’ discursive, A Home in Fiction, encouraged me to compare my experiences with
stars to those of past cultures, and so it felt appropriate to write in the discursive form to reflect my personal
exploration.

The Long Run heralded personal anecdotes to convey the author’s value of running, particularly after the
embarrassment she endured in adolescence. The anecdotes also help to merge the social issues of running as
a woman with her issue. The anecdotes in my discursive aim to convey my awe from experiencing the night
sky at camp, but also challenge the social issue of light pollution.

My metaphor of how stars are embedded into many cultures reflects the eternal quality of stars highlighted
in John Keats’ poem, Bright Star, and Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 that emphasise nature as steadfast.

My imagery of “fragile banks, which too are slowly crumbling into the murky sky,” was inspired by Noel
Pearson’s Eulogy for Gough Whitlam, in which he expressed the hampering of opportunities to Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander people through the visceral imagery of closed doors and ‘a technicolour butterfly
from its long dormant chrysalis.”

Although, what we see in our night sky is equivocal, I hope that my discursive reminds of cultural and
scientific significance stars still contribute to our ever-pre-occupied society.