I’m not religious but astronomy is the closest thing to god that I believe in. for thousands of years people looked up at the sky and saw something so beautiful it could only be divine. mosques hired astronomers to calculate the precise times of prayers. al-Biruni believed that studying astronomy was an act of worship and was a timekeeper for a mosque. Egyptian coffin lids were decorated with star clocks. Kepler sought order from the seemingly incomprehensible orbit of Mars because he believed god made everything with a purpose, and nothing was random. Mayan astronomers timed religious rituals and celebrations with celestial events, and their calculation of the length of the year remains one of the most accurate pre-modern estimates. the Big Horn Medicine Wheel was constructed at least 600 years ago and still aligns with the summer solstice to this day. we name our planets after gods and we see our myths in the shapes formed by stars. all 5 of China’s lunar missions so far are named after the moon goddess Chang’e. the golden record includes greetings in 55 languages, wishing the listeners peace and happiness. the greetings begin in Akkadian, spoken in Sumer six thousand years ago, and end in Wu, a modern Chinese dialect. the church I haven’t gone to in months has a mural on the ceiling depicting the night sky, with the stars in the exact positions as they were on the day construction began.
