Caption: Honourable mention in the 2022 IAU OAE Astrophotography Contest, category Still images of celestial patterns.   This image shows the Milky Way crossing the sky above the historical Bixby Bridge in Big Sur, a mountainous region in California, USA, in May 2021. The star directly above the shore is Antares, a red supergiant in the heart of the Scorpion. To its left, the clouds of the Milky Way seem to emerge from the same point of the horizon as the rocky landmass. Above the land, below the Milky Way in the left quarter of the image, is another bright star, Altair, the bright star in Aquila, the Eagle. The scorpion is considered a dangerous animal, so scorpion-men (human-scorpion hybrids) guarded the gate to the Netherworld in ancient Babylonian stories, as reported in the Gilgamesh saga. The Eagle, in contrast, appears in the Babylonian saga of King Etana who was taken to the sky by an Eagle and describes the world that he sees below him with increasing distance. Both heroes, Gilgamesh and Etana, are searching for the “herb of life” but one of them by going down, the other by travelling upwards. Gilgamesh aims to get back his dead friend Enkidu and to become immortal himself, while Etana is seeking the herb to help his wife become pregnant. The scorpion and the eagle are the animals supporting these heroes in their search, that ultimately remained unsuccessful. Gilgamesh finally learned that humans can only become immortal by their good deeds for humanity. The Eagle was also recognised in Greek culture, but it was only in Roman times that it became a messenger of a dead soul, carrying it towards the eternal stars. This was when Ptolemy created a constellation to represent the soul of Antinuous below the classical Eagle. This young friend and consultant of the Roman emperor Hadrian drowned in the Nile only seven years before the completion of the Almagest, and the whole Roman empire observed a state of national mourning. The Milky Way is seen as a “pathway of souls” by many cultures, but in the Babylonian culture, this is not the case. Still, in Greco-Roman philosophy, the bright white parts of it between Antares and Altair, at the intersection of the Milky Way and the Zodiac do have a meaning: Plato, Macrobius and other philosophers refer to it as “the X in the sky”, and the second Celestial Gate was probably considered to be here (the first one being the gate formed by the Hyades and Pleiades). These celestial pathways and gates, depicted above a gigantic bridge in the landscape and a site where the realms of land and ocean meet, make for an incredibly charged photograph. Additionally, the dark clouds in the Milky Way directly above the land form one of the two large dark constellations of the crocodiles, as interpreted by some people in southern Australia.
Credit: Marcin Zajac/IAU OAE

Caption: Winner in the 2022 IAU OAE Astrophotography Contest, category Still images of celestial patterns.   This image, taken from the Avenue of Baobabs, Morondava, Madagascar, in July 2017, shows the majestic band of the Milky Way, our home galaxy, together with a rich collection of constellations and asterisms: Crux, Centaurus, Scorpius, Sagittarius and the Teapot asterism. Towards the bottom left of the image we can see the Southern Cross and the pointer stars Alpha (the brighter of the two) and Beta Centauri, which help to distinguish it from similar-looking configurations. Some cultures in Africa associate the Southern Cross with a giraffe, while others associate the constellations with a pride of lions or even with the Tree of Life. Antares, the brightest star in the constellation Scorpius, is the orange-red star straight up from the middle baobab tree. To the Pokomo people from southwestern Kenya, Africa, the Milky Way is associated with the smoke emanating from a campfire lit by ancient people. The various people in South Africa, in contrast, have different star tales; the Khoikhoi from the region around Cape Town explained the colours of the red and white stars as red and white roots that were roasted on a fire and thrown towards the sky together with the ashes of the fire. The Xhosa from further east consider the Milky Way the raised bristle of a huge angry dog, while the Zulu from near Johannesburg interpret it as a stream of spears of their strongest warriors. Polynesian people, who were adept seafarers and navigators, see the constellation Scorpius as a fish hook, and refer to it as the demigod Maui’s Fish Hook. For the Djab Wurrung and the Jardwadjali people, the Southern Cross is part of a Dreamtime Story involving Tchingal, the Bram-bram-bult brothers (the pointer stars), their mother Druk (Delta Crux), and Bunya, the hunter who gets changed into a possum (Gacrux, red star at the top of the Southern Cross). In this image, the planets Saturn (the bright point above Antares) and Jupiter (the bright point at the bottom-right of the image close to the trunk of the baobab tree) are visible. Indigenous cultures have various stories associated with the planets, for example Kamilaroi and Wailan people associate Saturn with wunygal, a small bird. The Boorong people of Western Victoria associate Jupiter with Ginabongbearp, the chief of the old spirits (Nurrumbunguttias), who takes the totemic form of the sulphur-crested white cockatoo.
Credit: Amirreza Kamkar/IAU OAE

Caption: Winner in the 2022 IAU OAE Astrophotography Contest, category Still images of celestial patterns.   This image was taken in July 2016 from the Amboseli National Park in Kenya, located close to the equator. In Egyptian mythology from northern Africa, the Milky Way was associated with a river sailed by gods and souls. The Zulu in South Africa interpret this pattern of dark and bright clouds of stars as an animal with black and white skin, whereas the South African Khoikhoi and San considered it “The Star’s Road”. In several South African cultures, the arch of the Milky Way is a pathway to the heavens formed by a mother goddess, according to a South African creation myth that was adopted in the 19th century from early ethnological research, but has vanished today. In the middle-right of the image we find the bright red star Antares in the modern constellation of the Scorpion and at the upper-left edge is the white star Vega that is considered a Male Steenbok by the peoples around Cape Town. Indigenous Australians have many names for the Milky Way. The Yolnu people of Arnhem Land in Australia’s Northern Territory refer to the Milky Way as Milnguya, the sky river. One of the prominent patterns in this image is associated with the contrast between the light and dark regions of the Milky Way. These dark regions are cool dense clouds of interstellar dust and gas, which block the light from stars behind them. One of the prominent patterns is that of the Celestial Emu referred to as Tchingal by several Indigenous peoples of south Australia. The head and beak of the emu (the Coalsack Nebula) lie to the bottom-left of the Southern Cross (seen in the far bottom-right of the image), and the body and legs stretch leftward from it. Other indigenous groups associate the dark regions with caves or waterways. The orientation of the emu over the year provides important clues as to when it is time to pick emu eggs, and when the eggs are hatching. In some months, when these clouds of the Milky Way are close to the horizon, they are not considered as emu at all but as two creeping crocodiles. The modern figure of the dark Pipe Nebula is clearly visible above the centre of the Galaxy; the smoke of this pipe reaches the colourful rho Ophiuchi region next to Antares in Scorpius, the orange-red star just above the Milky Way. Antares is referred to by the Boorong people as Djuit, the red-rumped parrot, while the Kokatha people of the Western Desert refer to Antares as Kogolongo, the red-tailed black cockatoo. In addition, some notable constellations can be seen: Cygnus, Aquila, Lyra, Scorpius, Sagittarius, Crux, and Centaurus. The pointer stars, Alpha and Beta Centauri, are occasionally interpreted as The Eyes of the Beast in some South African traditions.
Credit: Amirreza Kamkar/IAU OAE

Caption: Honourable mention in the 2022 IAU OAE Astrophotography Contest, category Still images of celestial patterns.   Taken in May 2022 in Teide National Park in Tenerife, Spain, this image shows the arc of the Milky Way galaxy crossing the sky, accompanied by prominent constellations over the professional telescopes located on the mountains of that island. While the telescopes and the people working with them may  ignore the constellations, the photographer managed to catch the Milky Way in such a way that it almost matches the shape of the mountain. The bright star in the top-left side of the image is Vega, one of the brightest stars in the night sky and located in the small constellation Lyra. Being a white star, it is the standard star astrophysicists use to define the colour scale. As it is also a relatively close star, only about 25 light-years away, with a relatively simple name, it frequently appears in modern science fiction, for example in Carl Sagan’s famous novel “Contact”, which was filmed in 1997 with Jodie Foster starring as a radio astronomer. The bright star seen below the galaxy and on the left half of the image is Altair, also one of the brightest stars in the night sky and located in the constellation Aquila. Together with Deneb — a star in the constellation Cygnus (the Swan) that is not visible in this image — Altair and Vega form the Summer Triangle, a characteristic asterism of popular astronomy in the northern hemisphere, where these telescopes are located. On the right side of the image we can see the constellation Scorpius. This is easily identified by its brightest star, Antares, the reddish star in the Scorpion’s heart. Below it, the whole body and tail of the Scorpion can be found and above it the celestial Scorpion's head is represented by three bright bluish stars. Below the tail and above the horizon, the constellation of Ara, the Altar, is half-visible, but like all the stars of Sagittarius in the Milky Way and the much fainter ones in Hercules and Ophiuchus above it, these constellations are more difficult to pinpoint in this photograph full of stars. The head of Ophiuchus is the relatively bright star in the middle between Vega and Antares. In addition to the huge size of this constellation, it is also important because it is the thirteenth one of the Zodiac, and the Sun spends roughly three weeks in Ophiuchus, after only five days in Scorpius. Furthermore, Ophiuchus represents the model for the mythological best doctor in the world, called Asklepios in Greek mythology, and Aesculab in Latin. His constellation praises all people working in medical professions, including nurses, pharmacists and doctors.
Credit: Curd-Christian Tengeler/IAU OAE

Caption: Honourable mention in the 2022 IAU OAE Astrophotography Contest, category Still images of celestial patterns:.   This image features the Milky Way, our home galaxy, over Oregon, USA, as seen in July 2021. It is obviously a composite because the stars are not reflected in the water. Still, it is nicely composed to suggest a similarity between the stream of water on Earth and the (mirrored) stream of stars in the sky. The Milky Way clearly dominates the sky in this image. As a prominent feature in the sky, the Milky Way has been associated with the religions and mythologies of many cultures. The best-known association from Greek folklore “explains” it as a stream of divine milk from the mighty mother goddess Hera, whose husband god Zeus frequently misbehaved (as he did in this case, causing this accident). Greek mythology, on the other hand, considered it to be the path of the souls, while ancient Greek science suggested several scientific explanations, all of which turned out to be false. The Ojibwe in North America, who live to the east of Oregon where this photograph was taken, also consider the Milky Way a Path for Spirits and a River of Souls. Looking at the foreground of the picture, this belief is even more understandable; it looks as if the rivers of Earth and heaven merge at the horizon. The prominent feature in the middle of the image is the dark region called the Pipe Nebula in the Milky Way. The smoke of this pipe goes to the right and ends almost at a treetop, where we find the orange star Antares in the heart of the Scorpion. In the middle of the image, below the Pipe, there is a huge dark area in the Milky Way with two prominent red spots. These spots are hydrogen clouds called the Cat’s Paw and the Lagoon, but in this image they look like the red eyes of great Manitou, the Great Spirit of the Iroquois Native Americans. The constellation of Sagittarius in this area is not recognisable because the image of the Milky Way is highly processed in order to display these dark features that are invisible to the naked eye.
Credit: Marcin Zajac/IAU OAE