First Nations Sky Talk - National Science Week 2023
- Where
- Coventry Library, 63 Mount Barker Road, Stirling SA 5152
- Tags
- Library, Outdoor, Adult, STEAM
- Cost
- Free
- Tickets
- Bookings required
First Nations people have been looking at the night sky for thousands of years. This connection with the night sky represents some of the earliest ponderings about the cosmos and was an effort to explain natural phenomena. Moreover, the stars were used for navigation, education, as a seasonal guide to the availability of foods, in addition to reinforcing cultural identity and spirituality.
Paul 'Starman' Curnow, astronomy lecturer at the Adelaide Planetarium will talk about some of the First Nations Dreaming stories; their ‘dark pattern’ shapes, such as the ‘celestial emu’; the names they gave to the stars and the differences between the way the sky is viewed in comparison to the classical 88-constellations used by contemporary astronomers.