My 1931 beginners' guide to astronomy,
The Stars In Their Courses by
Sir James Jeans, really is the gift that keeps on giving. Currently loving this passage on
the Coal Sack Nebula from the very end of the book:
This region contains one of the most brilliant parts of the Milky Way, and also one of its most remarkable features, a pear-shaped black patch on the sky 8° long by 5° wide, which the early navigators and astronomers called the Coal Sack. Early Australian folk-lore interprets this as a yawning pit of darkness and also as the embodiment of evil in the shape of an emu, which lies in wait at the foot of a tree represented by the Stars of the Cross for an opossum driven by its persecutors to take refuge among its branches.
If you grew up watching British TV in the 1970s,
the idea of the embodiment of evil in the shape of an emu will ring a few bells...
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| "Hello, Possums!" |
