Related papers: Aurorae in Australian Aboriginal Traditions
The canopy of stars is a central presence in the daily and spiritual lives of Aboriginal Tasmanians. With the arrival of European colonists, Tasmanian astronomical knowledge and traditions were interrupted and dispersed. Fragments can be…
Aboriginal stories dating back many thousands of years talk of a fire from the sky in an area now home to the Henbury meteorite craters, in the Northern Territory
The Kamilaroi people and their neighbours, the Euahlayi, Ngemba, and Murrawarri, are an Aboriginal cultural grouping located in the northwest and north central of New South Wales. They have a rich history, but have been missed in much of…
Indigenous Australian practices, developed and honed over thousands of years, weave science with storytelling. In this Indigenous science series, we'll look at different aspects of First Australians' traditional life and uncover the…
A major focus of the archaeoastronomical research conducted around the world focuses on understanding how ancient cultures observed sunrise and sunset points along the horizon, particularly at the solstices and equinoxes. Scholars argue…
Recently, a widely publicized claim has been made that the Aboriginal Australians discovered the variability of the red star Betelgeuse in the modern Orion, plus the variability of two other prominent red stars: Aldebaran and Antares. This…
Just one generation ago, schoolkids were taught that Aboriginal people couldn't count beyond five, wandered the desert scavenging for food, had no civilization or religion, had no agriculture, couldn't navigate, didn't build houses, and…
English: To the Meriam Mir people of Mer (Murray Island) in the eastern Torres Strait, bright meteors are an important element of death customs and beliefs. We draw from a combination of ethno-historic studies and interviews with Meriam…
Ethnographic evidence indicates that bora (initiation) ceremonial sites in southeast Australia, which typically comprise a pair of circles connected by a pathway, are symbolically reflected in the Milky Way as the 'Sky Bora'. This evidence…
Technology has, without doubt, expanded our understanding of space. The Voyager 1 space probe is on the brink of leaving our solar system. Massive telescopes have discovered blasts of fast radio bursts from 10 billion light years away. And…
Stellar coronal activity has been shown to persist into the low-mass star regime, down to late M-dwarf spectral types. However, there is now an accumulation of evidence suggesting that at the end of the main sequence there is a transition…
Solar activity has been recorded as auroras or sunspots in various historical sources. These records are of much importance for investigating both long-term solar activities and extremely intense solar flares. In previous studies, they were…
The Astronomical Diaries from Babylonia (ADB) are an excellent source of information of natural phenomena, including astronomical ones, in pre-Christ era because it contains the record of highly continuous and systematic observations. In…
The Euahlayi people are an Australian Aboriginal language group located in north-central New South Wales and south-central Queensland. They have a rich culture of astronomy, and use of the night sky in resource management. Like several…
Aurorae are detected from all the magnetized planets in our Solar System, including Earth. They are powered by magnetospheric current systems that lead to the precipitation of energetic electrons into the high-latitude regions of the upper…
Song and dance are a traditional means of strengthening culture and passing knowledge to successive generations in the Torres Strait of northeastern Australia. Dances incorporate a range of apparatuses to enhance the performance, such as…
The importance of the investigation of magnetic superstorms is not limited to academic interest, because these superstorms can cause catastrophic impact on the modern civilisation due to our increasing dependency on technological…
Auroras are emissions in a planetary atmosphere caused by its interactions with the surrounding plasma environment. They have been observed in most planets and some moons of the solar system. Since their first discovery in 2005, Mars…
The Nabateans built several monuments in Petra and elsewhere displaying a decoration with a preference for astronomical motifs, possibly as a reflection of their religion. However, due to the lack of direct written accounts and the scarcity…
Indigenous peoples across the world observe the motions and positions of stars to develop seasonal calendars. Additionally, changing properties of stars, such as their brightness and colour, are also used for predicting weather. Combining…