In the modern age in which we live, we find ourselves in a remarkable position in time. We are fortunate enough to be living in the age of the scientific method, where technological advancements and the philosophy of logic allow us to find definitive answers to the questions of the universe. It has allowed us to build complex technological societies that communicate in seconds. We can travel across the globe in hours, cure diseases that once would be incurable. Heat homes and power cities, fly spaceships to the edge of the solar system and even build machines that can think, in some part, for themselves. All this, in an astonishingly small amount of time. So short in fact that 1 man, Kane Tanaka, was able to watch humanity take its first tentative 59 seconds of powered flight at the Kill Devils Hill in North Carolina on December 17th 1903 and the first 39 seconds of powered flight on the surface of another planet on April 19th 2021. Within the span of a single, albeit unusually long, human lifetime, humanity has gone from a species confined to the ground of its home world to a species with its feet on multiple planets and robotic wings that touch the clouds of Mars and beyond. 

This revolution of science and technology was also seen in the world of cosmology and astronomy, who’s horizons have expanded by almost 50 Billion light years in the last 100 years and now include a theory of the Universe’s history from the first pico-seconds of existence to the conceivable end of time itself in 1 trillion trillion (write out a trillion 8.33E116 times) <Needs relooking at, This number seems so unreasonably large>. And yet, we didn’t even know what the farside of the Moon looked like the day Sean Bean was born. For the vast majority of human history, the nature of the night sky was a mystery, an unreachable, untouchable, unknowable thing. Though this did not sate our curiosity, and so humans created complex mythology, religions and pantheons to explain the movement of the cosmos. 

In this basic course, you will learn of the major mythology and religious legends created across the globe to explain the night sky. The Sun, Earth, Moon and planets, as well as stars, constellations and beyond all were given meaning by mankind in the pre-telescope era each with epic stories to tell, and long reaching ramifications for the development of global cultures today.