I remember one evening when we were driving home at a time exactly like this. On the way, we passed a flat, open grassland. The closest trees and shrubs were a few hundred metres away in each direction. We could feel the day’s heat disappearing and a cool air breeze on our skin. Some of us were chatting about the things we saw that day with silent voices. We got slower, and then we stopped. The student who drove our car turned off the engine.
“Let’s take a moment and look at the stars”, he said.
The Milky Way, a radiant band of light
We turned our heads backwards and our faces towards the sky. There wasn’t a single cloud in the sky. There was no moon. But we saw a radiant band of light that looked like a pathway through the night—the Milky Way.
The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy containing more than 5000 physically documented planets, including the Earth, and an estimated 200 billion stars. With human eyes, we cannot see individual stars without a telescope. We see the collective glow of billions and billions of stars, planets and gas clouds, giving it a “milky” appearance. It takes about 25 000 years for their light to travel to us, meaning that the centre is approximately 25 000 lightyears away. The Milky Way galaxy exists in other galaxies; the largest and closest one to the Earth is called Andromeda.
Star gazing
The longer we looked, the more stars appeared. There was silence around us, and after a while, it was also within us. We just sat there gazing at the stars—the perfect end of a day. After a while, our instructor began to speak.
“In an ancient story, it is told that after the sun sets, there is a blanket drawn over the Earth that brings us the night. This blanket separates the world of the humans from the world of the Gods. In the world of the Gods, there is everlasting light. On Earth, with the night comes the darkness. But in the blanket, there are countless little holes where their light shines through. Some believe the Gods watch over us by looking through these holes at night.”
Ancient stories & campfires
In many African cultures, stories and beliefs are told around campfires at night, being passed on from generation to generation. Another ancient story tells us about a girl at a campfire at night. She ran around the fire while throwing handfuls of the fire’s ashes into the sky. She created the Milky Way, a glowing pathway that forever shows her people the way back home. In other myths, some believe the Milky Way forms the backbone of the sky or “God’s back” that holds up the firmament and prevents the dome from collapsing.
Shooting stars
I counted six shooting stars that night while gazing into the sky. I wish for us to do that more often. And I wish for us to have the time to listen to ancient stories and be with people who can tell them. I promise you both will fill your heart with joy.
References
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How to take beautiful photos of the Night Sky
There are many different types of astrophotography, from wide-angle Milky Way photography to deep-sky photography through an astronomical telescope.
We join Christoff Els, EcoTraining Film & Photography as he takes us through the basic process and camera settings to capture that beautiful night sky out in the bush.
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