Search Results: Stars

The Nebra Sky Disk is one of the most fascinating, and some would say controversial, archaeological finds of recent years. Dated to 1600 BCE, this bronze disk has a diameter of 32cm (about the size of a vinyl LP) and weighs around 2 kg. It...

The Fates Gathering in the Stars by Elihu Vedder, 1887 CE, now in the Art Institute of Chicago. This image depicts the three Greek Fates - Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos - spinning the thread of life, then marking it's length and cutting...

One of the most useful skills in early times was to be able to navigate using the stars. With this ability, sailors and explorers were able to venture through their lands and even discover new ones. Here's a little on how they did it...

A New Zealand ocean voyaging group is relieved to have its canoe - the Haunui - back home, after a mammoth sail to Norfolk Island that was delayed for weeks due to bad weather. Alex Perrottet and our cameraman Nick Monro went along to Maraetai...

The Maori people of Aotearoa (New Zealand) have long observed the heliacal (pre-dawn) rising of the star cluster commonly known throughout the world as Pleiades or Messier 45 (M45), located in the constellation of Taurus. Matariki is the...

Hellenistic astrology encompassed various forms of divination in Greece and the Mediterranean, all linked to the observation of astronomical phenomena. Hellenistic astrology was based on the belief that the stars and planets could either...

Polynesian navigation of the Pacific Ocean and its settlement began thousands of years ago. The inhabitants of the Pacific islands had been voyaging across vast expanses of ocean water sailing in double canoes or outriggers using nothing...

The term 'mythology' comes from the Greek mythos (story-of-the-people) and logos (word or speech), meaning the spoken story of a people. Every civilization of the ancient world developed a belief system, which is characterized as 'mythology'...

Claudius Ptolemy (c. 100 to c. 170 CE) was an Alexandrian mathematician, astronomer, and geographer. His works survived antiquity and the Middle Ages intact, and his theories, particularly on a geocentric model of the universe with planets...

Aristarchus of Samos (l. c. 310 - c. 230 BCE) was a Greek astronomer who first proposed a heliocentric model of the universe in which the sun, not the earth, was at the center. Although his theory was noted by other thinkers of his time...