Stargazing: observing the rational future from the night sky

When watching historical dramas, we often encounter such a scene: an old man with a white beard suddenly jumps out and says to the emperor with a righteous face, "I watch the celestial phenomena at night ...". Yes, in our tradition, "knowing astronomy above and geography below" is the ultimate test of people's extensive knowledge, and "knowing astronomy above" is more mysterious and sacred. Looking up at the starry sky, as Kant said, has always been an eternal fantasy and thinking of human beings. "Watching the sky at night" is the vast starry sky overhead. What are the distant stars, what are the hidden meanings of those stars, and the thoughts on time, space and life derived from them have fascinated countless generations.

However, there are still differences between the east and the west in stargazing. In ancient China, the sky was divided into five celestial officials: China, East, West, South and North. Middle officials are divided into Wei Zi, Qiu, Shi Tian and * * * Three Walls. The four officials in the east, west, north and south are also called the Four Elephants. There are black dragons in the east, basalts in the north, white tigers in the west and suzaku in the south. Each elephant is divided into 7 stars and * * * 28 stars. And at MBE, space scientist Maggie? In the Beginner's Guide to Stargazing consulted by Dr. Adling-Pocock, we can appreciate the unique tradition of stargazing in the West. According to the style of the British DK encyclopedia, the beginner's guide to stargazing is closely combined with science, readability and visibility, especially the topic of stargazing, which must be supplemented by high-quality pictures. Therefore, the beginner's star-watching guide uses a large number of high-quality star-watching pictures to guide readers from Orion to the Pleiades, and then from Cassiopeia to Aries, while being familiar with the star-watching methods, and enjoying the vast starry sky. This is a high-quality stargazing trip.

A small detail mentioned above can just continue the traditional topic of stargazing in the East and the West. "From Orion to the Pleiades" is the standard method of combining East and West in modern astronomy. After we divide the starry sky into 28 stars, many stars are named after stars, such as Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse, Antares, Pleiades and so on. Names like "Orion" continue the western tradition of stargazing, which began in ancient Greece. The ancient Greeks divided the starry sky into 48 constellations, connected the bright stars in each constellation into images of various people, animals or other objects, and then named them. Of course, astronomers in ancient Greece could only observe in the northern hemisphere at that time, so they did not divide the starry sky into the southern sky. This situation didn't change until after17th century. By 1928, after the International Astronomical Union adjusted the combination of the ancient Greek constellation system and the southern sky constellation system, the Sunday 88 constellation became the international common constellation division.

It is on this basis that the Beginner's Guide to Stargazing, combined with the knowledge of contemporary astronomy, began the journey of stargazing, which is very interesting and smacks of "taking half a step more". For example, after we know the 88 constellations in the world, we may stop at the names of the constellations, but the Introduction to Stargazing further introduces the concept of "celestial sphere", that is, the sky curtain we use to watch stars can be imagined as a big celestial sphere wrapped around the earth, so that we can mark the star-watching objects such as constellations we know on the surface of this celestial sphere at the same time. For another example, stars in the same constellation should be close to each other like planets in the solar system. The "Introduction to Stargazing" points out that those stars are actually not at the same distance as the earth, such as Orion, which we are familiar with. The astronomical fact is that Betelgeuse is 498 light years away from the earth, Betelgeuse is 243 light years away from the earth, Betelgeuse is 860 light years away from the earth, Betelgeuse is 736 light years away from the earth, and Akisaka is 69 1 light year away. In other words, these stars are not close to each other.

Therefore, in our era when astronomical knowledge and related scientific and technological level have been greatly enriched and improved, stargazing has become an act with a sense of historical leap. When people follow Maggie. Under the guidance of Dr. Adling-Pocock, we looked into the deep sky step by step and could not help feeling. At that moment, we seemed to be standing with our ancestors, looking up from the earth under our feet and feeling the eternal vicissitudes of the constellation. The Beginner's Guide to Stargazing focuses on "beginners", so its stargazing method is extremely simple and practical, almost the same as our ancestors. This method is logically based on the celestial sphere. First, select the "reference constellation" or "reference point", and from this point, complete the observation behavior by effectively observing the displacement. Like Maggie. Dr. Adling-Pocock chose the Big Dipper as the "benchmark constellation", then went on to Ursa Major, where the Big Dipper was located, and then found Ursa Minor. A long arc extending from the handle of the Big Dipper will find Shepherd, and the dog constellation is composed of two stars next to Shepherd. ...

It is not difficult to find that this kind of observation method, which seems to "pull one hair and move the whole body", is very effective, and the cultural consciousness reflected behind this method is also worth pondering. Orion can be found all the way from the Big Dipper, and more other constellations can be found after Orion. In fact, in the eyes of the ancients, all the constellations on the celestial sphere are a whole, and their mutual positions and the laws of their respective movements are endowed with many meanings. So there is the ancient costume bridge we mentioned at the beginning. "Watching the sky at night" evolved on the basis of this idea, while in the west, it corresponds to our concept of "astrology". Western astrology is generally believed to have originated in Babylon in the two river basins. Of course, ancient Egypt also had its own astronomy and astrology. Hermes's four astrological encyclopedias are said to be close-ups of the moon god, among which the "Zodiac of the Human Body" is the most famous. In fact, ancient Egypt has closely linked astrology with everything in itself. No matter our observation of astronomical phenomena or western astrology, its purpose is to predict the future and guide our next action, so we can often see in books and movies that the emperor asked an astrologer to astrology for himself before the army went out.

Faced with this situation, today we always like to interpret it as the extremely low level of production and technology. People can't explain all kinds of natural phenomena, so they have to turn to illusory things. This is how religion came into being. However, the situation of astrology developed from stargazing may be more complicated. Before light pollution and air pollution started, ancient ancestors looked at the stars all over the sky and could imagine their inner shock. So we will see that our ancestors endowed the sky with the most magical and beautiful myth. The Star Watching Beginner's Guide has a related interpretation of this when introducing constellations. For example, among the hundreds of stars in the Pleiades cluster, six are very bright and visible to the naked eye, and there is a very weak light next to them. So people used the story of Seven Sisters in Greek mythology to describe this situation, and named the evening star after Merope, the youngest in Seven Sisters, because Merope did not marry God, but married a mortal-Sisyphus.

From this point of view, from the beginning, the ancestors were close to the stars in the sky and were willing to mark them with very story-telling myths. It is not difficult to understand why stargazing developed into later astrology, because since stargazing is emotionally close, naturally with the development of observation tools, especially the development of ancient surveying and mapping technology, people will naturally think of the earth from Tianlian and then think of themselves. On the other hand, the ancestors' interest in stargazing and the closeness of constellations may also be due to the low production level and the low living standard of the ancients. In ancient times, every day was full of the danger of death. The danger of reality made the ancients more eager to get rid of their own lives. Therefore, after a hard day, people may look up at the starry sky at night without internet and entertainment activities, which may be an exit that can temporarily make them lose their minds and then forget their hardships.

According to this logic, in today's more developed production and living standards than before, astrology should have no market at all. But the fact is that astrology is still in the ascendant and has a vigorous development momentum. Even during Reagan's presidency of the United States in the 1980s, some media broke the news that the White House arranged daily affairs according to the prediction of an astrologer in San Francisco. Today in the new century, the "constellation theory", which is very popular with young people, also has a very rapid development momentum. It seems that people have returned to ancient times and become interested in constellations again. Aside from people's use of constellations for entertainment, we can realize that in the cement forest in the post-industrial era, although the material life is relatively rich, people no longer worry about survival, but their spiritual life is no less than that of the ancients. Therefore, after the great development of astronomy in the17th century, astrology gradually declined and this ancient art flourished again.

However, it is very gratifying that the development of stargazing activities and modern astrology have risen at the same time, with a faster momentum and deeper popularity. In our own country and Europe and America, more and more people, especially young people, have begun to take part in this activity. Whenever there is an important astronomical event, many stargazers will flock to observe and stare at the sky. To some extent, stargazing is far more than just a fashion activity. Many people regard it as their lifelong hobby, and many people feel the universe and life by watching the stars. This is actually closely related to the reasons for the development of astrology. In addition to people's natural curiosity about the universe, it is also because the spiritual crisis in the post-industrial era has gradually intensified under the catalysis of the Internet. The richer people's knowledge and insight, the more attracted they will be to these grand issues, such as the meaning of life, the value of their own lives, and the relationship between the universe and us. This is the inevitable law of the times and the development of human thought.

Maggie. Dr. Adling-Pocock said in the preface of "A Guide to Stargazing": "This book will lead us to follow the footsteps of our ancestors, explore the mysteries of constellations, and appreciate the charm of this sky among the stars". This charm has experienced the magic and belief of the ancestors in the era of "watching the sky at night", and today it shines with more powerful rational light, which is the eternal enlightenment of the stars in the vast starry sky to mankind. Although our life has been trapped in the land under our feet, although we will encounter all kinds of grievances and troubles, when we look up at the stars, we deeply feel that compared with those familiar constellations, ourselves, the people and things we meet today, and even human beings are so small and fleeting. This kind of shock is similar to Kant's "noble beauty". Once a person has tried this kind of beauty, he will have the opportunity to embrace a completely different future-an ideal future.

"There are two things, the longer we think, the more awe and awe we will have in our hearts, and that is the starry sky above us and the moral law in our hearts."

Emanuel? Kant

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