coll. - The Astronomy Book

In many of the worlds most populated areas today, many of us are barely aware of the night sky. We cannot see it because the blaze of artificial lighting overwhelms the faint and delicate light of the stars. Light pollution on this scale has exploded since the mid-20th century. In past times, the starry patterns of the sky, the phases of the moon, and the meanderings of the planets were a familiar part of daily experience and a perpetual source of wonder.

Few people fail to be moved the first time they experience a clear sky on a truly dark night, in which the magnificent sweep of the Milky Way arches across the sky. Our ancestors were driven by a mixture of curiosity and awe in their search for order and meaning in the great vault of the sky above their heads. The mystery and grandeur of the heavens were explained by the spiritual and divine. At the same time, however, the orderliness and predictability of repetitive cycles had vital practical applications in marking the passage of time.

Archaeology provides abundant evidence that, even in prehistoric times, astronomical phenomena were a cultural resource for societies around the world. Where there is no written record, we can only speculate as to the knowledge and beliefs early societies held. The oldest astronomical records to survive in written form come from Mesopotamia, the region that was between and around the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in present-day Iraq and neighboring countries. Clay tablets inscribed with astronomical information date back to about 1600 BCE . Some of the constellations (groupings of stars) we know today have come from Mesopotamian mythology going back even earlier, to before 2000 BCE .

"Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze."