How stars become paintings

An AI generated image of a galaxy (Image by freepik)

The night sky is a quiet gift. It is filled with stars and moonlight, and it settles over us like a silk blanket as we sleep. We are often too busy to notice how beautiful the night sky is. However, when the clouds give us permission, we are granted the view of great glowing suns that, through distance, have hidden themselves by appearing as tiny, twinkling stars. These stars can be many things. They can be beacons of hope or even sources of light. Our ancestors, however, have chosen to give them the form of paintings. We call these paintings made of stars, constellations.

When we look up at the night sky and see twinkling stars, they seem to be arranged haphazardly. Every star is a stranger. Yet, somehow, those who lived in the past have learned to make sense of these arrangements and find shapes and stories in them. Where we see scattered stars, they saw lions, hunters, fishes and monsters. They then used those images as maps to guide them through their journeys. To this day, we find constellations useful both in science and astrology.