Star Stories with Ian Lauer

Tonight, we're looking at the constellation Perseus. In that constellation, he's said to be holding the head of Medusa, and the eye of Medusa is a star that blinks - a star called Algol, also known as the Demon Star. It's changing brightness was first discovered in the 1700s. But a team of researchers believe the ancient Egyptians were aware of, and tracked, the variability of Algol's brightness....

Tonight, we’re looking at a particularly strange constellation. It's about…hair. The constellation I’m talking about is Coma Berenices. A small, faint star pattern just above Virgo. It reaches its highest point at midnight at the beginning of Springtime. Tonight’s story comes to us from ancient Greece, and it’s a unique one…because it’s about someone who was a real person. It was written about 227...

Tonight, we’re looking at the Summer Triangle, and we'll be hearing a story that comes to us from ancient China. The earliest known reference to this tale is from 2,600 years ago. And the fascinating part about this story is that, as the ages progressed, we can see the story evolve over time to a full narrative. Parts were being changed and updated as time went on. But tonight’s version is going t...

Tonight, we're looking at the constellation Aruiga, the Charioteer. And we'll be telling a tale from Greek mythology, about the famous fall of Phaethon. While many know this story as a lesson of the consequences of ego and hubris, the famous ancient philosopher Plato say this tale is actually transmitting ancient knowledge about the precession of the equinoxes. So let's dive into the story, and se...

Tonight we're going to the Philippines. More specifically, to the southern island of the Bukidnon people, a story which was written down in the early twentieth century. It's about a hunter named Magbangal. But what makes it fascinating isn't just what happens to Magbangal. It's what happens afterward. Because when the story is finished, almost everything inside it ends up in the sky. And together,...

Tonight we're looking at the Sun and the Moon. This story comes from the Hausa people of northern Nigeria. And it's a very simple story. But it answers a very strange question. Why does the Sun chase the Moon? And the incredible part about this story? There's fantastic observational astronomy encoded within such a short tale. So let's go back to a time when they weren't enemies. Because once you h...

Tonight we're looking at the constellation Corona Borealis, also known as the Northern Crown. And for more than a century, books, astronomy websites and planetarium stories have connected that circle with a Native American tale called The Celestial Sisters . It's usually described as a Shawnee story about Corona Borealis. Except I went back and found the oldest published version I could verify. An...

Tonight we're looking at the Big Dipper. It's a story about the Cosmic Hunt, and it comes from the Haudenosaunee, who resided in what's now New York and southern Ontario. This story contains a tiny, very specific detail that, when you first hear it, you wouldn’t even notice. But this tiny detail shows up in stories told on the other side of the world, by people who could not possibly have met. A r...

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 advanc...

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 othe...

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. An...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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 ori...

Tonight, we’re not looking at a particular constellation or pattern in the sky. Tonight, we’re looking at the thing we see every day: the Sun. And I’m going to tell you a story about why it has to fight its way into the sky every single morning. This story comes from the Aztecs, who built one of the greatest empires in the history of the Americas. Their civilization centered on Tenochtitlan, where...

Tonight I’ll be telling a tale about a star in the sky that everyone has heard of. It’s not the biggest star, or the brightest. But for a long time, it was one of the most important stars in history. It’s a star called Polaris. Or as we know it as, the North Star. This story comes from a group whose ancestral lands span the high desert of the United States Southwest: the Paiute. They knew the land...

An ancient story from the Anishinaabe people of the Great Lakes tells us that the stars of the Big Dipper is a memorial, written in the night sky for anyone willing to look up and listen. They saw an animal. A hunter, a father, a hero. They called him The Great Fisher. Not a fisherman with a rod and a line, but an animal. A fierce, weasel-like creature found in the forests of the Great Lakes. But...

Every culture in human history looked up at the same sky, and told stories about what they saw. Stories about Gods and Monsters, love and betrayal. Sacrifice and revenge. But those stories were more than entertainment. Encoded in them were things like calendars, star maps, even survival guides. Knowledge so important that the only way to protect it was to embed it inside a story. These are some of...