Tonight we're looking at the Pleiades.

The one I want to tell you tonight is from the Kokatha people, who live in the Great Victoria Desert in South Australia.

The tale I’m going to tell is just going to be my way of telling it in a modern format. But just remember that those communities are still there and the story is still theirs. And to anyone who speaks these languages, my apologies in advance for how I handle the names.

Now hidden inside it is something that a team of astronomers found that absolutely blew my mind when I learned about it. It is one of the single most impressive observations I have ever come across in any culture, anywhere.

So stay with me through the story. Because the decode on this one is worth it.

Tonight we're looking at a constellation called Andromeda.

When most people in the astro world hear that word, they immediately think of the Andromeda galaxy, not the constellation.

But this story’s focus is on the tale behind Andromeda, which comes to us from Greek mythology.

This story, which is just a small piece in a greater story, contains six constellations, all relatively close to each other in the night sky.

When viewed together, tell a story from long ago.

But this story goes back much further than most people think.

So with that, let's find out how she ended up with the name, "The Chained Beauty".

Tonight's story comes to us from the Mexica, the people most of us call the Aztecs, a myth written down in the fifteen hundreds, based on a much older tradition.

Many say there's a face on the Moon. But to the Aztecs, they saw a rabbit. And don't let the fact that it's a rabbit fool you, because this story is filled with drama, fire, sacrifice, and punishment.

So let's go back to the beginning. And when I say the beginning, I mean the beginning of this world. The one we’re in today.

Because this world where you and I live in…isn’t the first.

Tonight's story comes from the Nordic people. A story written down on the small island of Iceland.

Almost everything we know about Norse mythology comes to us through two books that were written down in medieval Iceland.

And inside those books is a story about what happens when, for a brief moment in time, the Sun goes dark.

A total solar eclipse.

So let's go back to the time of the people we call Vikings. Places of deep cold and freezing water.

Let's go back to learn what they thought was happening when the Sun goes missing.

Tonight we’ll be telling a story about the stars and the Milky Way.

A story about a Coyote, and how the stars in the sky came to be.

We are looking at it through the eyes of the people most of us know as the Navajo, whose homeland stretches across much of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah.

To put yourself in this tale, I need you to do something first.

Take everything you know about the world and set it down for a minute. Because where we are going, none of it exists.

At least...not yet.

Tonight, we’re sitting under the band of light that we call the Milky Way, where we’ll be telling the tale of the legendary demigod Maui.

He’s typically associated with the constellation Scorpius. But instead of a scorpion, the tail and stinger are Maui’s bloody fish hook. And, unlike many stories we’re used to, Maui doesn’t actually belong to one constellation. Instead, he moves through the sky, from one constellation to another.

The story of Maui appears across Hawaii, New Zealand, Samoa, Tonga, Tahiti, and dozens of islands scattered across the Pacific, each version with its own specific details and local flavor. It's a living tradition, so we must respect that.

For tonight, I’ll be telling a blend of these myths as one story.

And much like the life of other great characters, your Orions, your Thors, Maui’s story is rich and full of adventure.

Maui’s full name, Maui-tikitiki-a-Taranga, translates to Maui-topknot-of-Taranga. It’s the perfect description for him when we talk about the astronomy of this myth, which, as always, we’ll reveal at the end of the story.

But in terms of the myth, it’s a description of how this demigod came to be, from the hair of Taranga, his mother.

However, Taranga isn’t excited about her baby. Instead, she’s going to do something that, for those of us today, is unthinkable.

She’s about to abandon her baby in the ocean.

Tonight we're looking at the skies of the southern hemisphere.

And I'm going to tell you a story that is so remarkable, it proves this tale is not just a myth…but a memory.

The focus of tonight’s story is in the southern sky, where the stars wheel around an empty point. But it wasn't always empty. It's a tale about a great south star that once ruled over the southern sky. A southern pole star. And what happened when it lost its place in the sky.

This tale comes from the Palawa people, aboriginals from the island of Tasmania, which is just south of mainland Australia.

The Palawa people paid an unimaginable price for contact with the British, and that history matters when we share their stories.

So let's go back. To the very beginning. When the world was young and the ice was thick and a powerful being made something so terrible and broken that his own brother had to do intervene. And that intervention would leave one of them dead.

Orion is probably the most recognizable star pattern in the night sky. Rivaling the Pleiades, rivaling the Big Dipper.

The story of Orion is considered to be one of the oldest stories in the world. At least, some parts of it.

Some say it’s thousands of years old , others say maybe even a hundred thousand.

It makes you wonder…what parts of the myth are new…and what parts have the essence of the original telling?

Tonight we're looking at him through the eyes of Greek mythology. And even within Greek tradition there are multiple versions.

We're going to pull from some of the oldest sources we have, the ones written closest to the original telling.

Someone who was gifted with so much…but still wanted more.