In episode three, we head south — to the smallest constellation in the sky and one of the most important. Crux carries a Hindu king who gate-crashed heaven and got stuck upside down for eternity, and an Aboriginal emu drawn from darkness rather than stars, whose changing posture across the seasons told people exactly when to find eggs, when to leave them alone, and when the year had turned. Plus the science of the southern pole — why there's no southern Polaris, how the Southern Cross solves that problem anyway, and the Jewel Box cluster, which looks exactly like its name and is one of the most visually rewarding objects in the southern sky.

Sources:

https://devdutt.com/a-king-called-trishanku/

https://www.constellation-guide.com/constellation-list/crux-constellation

http://www.emudreaming.com/Examples/emu.htm

http://www.emudreaming.com/literature/Haynes2000.pdf

Music: "Distant Galaxy" by SP Music

Sound Engineer: Ian Evans

Ursa Minor is the smaller bear — less famous than its neighbor, easier to overlook, and home to the single most useful star in the northern sky. In episode two, we follow the Little Dipper from the cave in Crete where Zeus was hidden as an infant, through the Egyptian theology of stars that never die, to Polaris itself — the fixed point around which everything else turns. Small constellation. Enormous significance.

Sources:

https://sacred-texts.com/egy/pyt/pyt19.htm

https://www.constellation-guide.com/little-dipper/

https://www.constellation-guide.com/constellation-list/ursa-minor-constellation

Music: "Distant Galaxy" by SP Music

Sound Engineer : Ian Evans

Seven stars. Countless stories. In our first episode, we follow Ursa Major and the Big Dipper from Greek tragedy to Indigenous hunting myth, from the Islamic Golden Age to the Underground Railroad — and then into the stars themselves, where a galaxy is bullying its neighbors and a black hole is eating a star. The bear who never sets has been overhead every clear night for all of human history. Tonight we find out why that matters.

Sources:

Asiatic Parallels in North American Star Lore: Ursa Major — William B. Gibbon, The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 77, No. 305

The Constellation of Orion and the Cosmic Hunt in Equatorial Africa — Vincent Vieira, Anthropos, Bd. 104, H. 2. (2009)

Richard Hinckley Allen — Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning

https://www.constellation-guide.com/constellation-list/ursa-major-constellation/#Myth

https://beakingoff.wordpress.com/2011/09/27/mikmaq-story-of-the-stars/

https://www.constellation-guide.com/big-dipper/

Music: "Distant Galaxy" by SP Music

Sound Engineer: Ian Evans

Seven stars. Countless stories. In our first episode, we follow Ursa Major and the Big Dipper from Greek tragedy to Indigenous hunting myth, from the Islamic Golden Age to the Underground Railroad — and then into the stars themselves, where a galaxy is bullying its neighbors and a black hole is eating a star. The bear who never sets has been overhead every clear night for all of human history.