Related papers: Twin Suns in Australian Aboriginal Traditions
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…
Implications of the recently discovered systematic abundance difference between the Sun and two collections of `solar twins' are discussed. The differences can be understood as an imprint on the abundances of the solar convection zone…
We review the literature for perceptions of meteors in the Maori cultures of New Zealand. We examine representations of meteors in religion, story, and ceremony. We find that meteors are sometimes personified as gods or children, or are…
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…
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…
The night sky played an important role in the social structure, oral traditions, and cosmology of the Arrernte and Luritja Aboriginal cultures of Central Australia. A component of this cosmology relates to meteors, meteorites, and impact…
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…
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…
There are two puzzles surrounding the Pleiades, or Seven Sisters. First, why are the mythological stories surrounding them, typically involving seven young girls being chased by a man associated with the constellation Orion, so similar in…
We discuss the songlines and navigation of the Wardaman people, and place them in context by comparing them with corresponding practices in other Australian Aboriginal language groups, using previously unpublished information and also…
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…
Speculations that encounters with interstellar clouds modify the terrestrial climate have appeared in the scientific literature for over 85 years. This article introduces a series of articles that seek to give substance to these…
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…
This work is devoted to the study of solar light that experiences single and multiple scattering in the atmosphere at the twilight time. The work is based on polarimetric observations of the twilight sky that were conducted in 1997 and 2000…
Four decades have gone by since the discovery that the solar wind at 1 AU seems to exist in two relatively distinct states: slow and fast. There is still no universal agreement concerning the primary physical cause of this apparently…
We present an overview of solar flares and associated phenomena, drawing upon a wide range of observational data primarily from the RHESSI era. Following an introductory discussion and overview of the status of observational capabilities,…
Meteoroids of a low-inclination stream hit the Earth arriving from a direction near the ecliptic. The radiant area of stream like this is often divided into two parts: one is situated northward and the other southward of the ecliptic. In…
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 phenomena observed at the Sun have a variety of unique radio signatures that can be used to diagnose the processes in the solar atmosphere. The insights provided by radio obervations are further enhanced when they are combined with…