Astronomy in Culture -- Cultures of Astronomy. Astronomie in der Kultur -- Kulturen der Astronomie.: Featuring the Proceedings of the Splinter Meeting at the Annual Conference of the Astronomische Gesellschaft, Sept. 14–16, 2021. Nuncius Hamburgensis; Vol. 57.

Foreword

I. 

This book’s structure

The area of cultural astronomy is a very huge one. It reaches from archaeoastronomy where lines of sight along walls of buildings and mountains are analysed through all kinds of rituals and cultural practises and up to the constellations that indigenous peoples defined. At many conferences, there is a strong focus on archaeoastronomical topics while we, at our conference, put more emphasis on the aspects of the history of constellations and the related traditions in cults, cultural transfers and transformations.

Nevertheless, the first chapter of this book is dedicated to the archaeoastronomical sites and historical buildings for astronomy that were presented at the conference. This chapter provides an overview on possible archaeological and certain architectural features related to astronomical topics. Ancient civilisations might have used artificial and natural marking points in order to make their astronomical calendars, while during the last millennium observatories were developed in much more sophisticated ways.

The second, third and fourth chapter are dedicated to the history of cultural practices with astronomical roots that are still in use today. Chapter 2 contains individual studies on ancient roots of some immaterial astronomical heritage such as our constellations. Chapter 3 presents some studies on immaterial heritage in our modern cultures, while Chapter 4 presents some studies aiming at a more general overview on constellations. This knowledge results from the cross-cultural comparison and the findings of general concepts.

In Chapter 5 three attempts are outline for collecting such cultural histories as presented above in a more systematic way. Apart from these scientific attempts, the free and open-source software Stellarium provides a huge and still growing repository for historical and indigenous constellation data. The according descriptions are collected in Chapter 6.

The most important global heritage is, however, the dark night sky itself. That is why, this attempts to protect it are described right at the beginning in the Foreword of the whole book.

Overall, there are two sorts of contributions in this book: papers and essays. Papers present well researched studies whereas essays are rather comments on a certain topic that has been discussed in the context of the conference. Essays avoid extensive references and footnotes but briefly present some facts and express fact-based personal opinions of the author(s).

II. 

The Conference in 2021

Susanne M Hoffmann (Jena) and Gudrun Wolfschmidt (Hamburg)

Due to the pandemic and the accompanying restrictions for travelling and assemblies the international Annual Meeting of the German Astronomical Society was held as online sessions. The conference took place during the week 2021, September 13-17, and the virtual meeting included invited plenary talks, splinter sessions, and working group meetings of the German Astronomical Society held as video conferences.

The working group on the history of astronomy, the Arbeitskreis Astronomiegeschichte (AKAG) der Astronomischen Gesellschaft (AG), held a splinter meeting on three of the five days of the conference. It was organised by Susanne M Hoffmann (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena) and Gudrun Wolfschmidt (Universität Hamburg) as conveners (SOC).

II.1. Call for the Splinter Meeting

There are many ways and styles of astronomical research: telescopic observations, glass plate archives, evaluating historical star charts, computation and simulation of historical phenomena etc. As there are many different cultures of astronomy, astronomy has a strong impact on human cultures. Creating constellations as a cultural frame of reference as a tool for orientation in space and time is only a first step towards a systematic usage of celestial phenomena in human societies. The selection of outstanding view points for observations, the building of observatories and development of instruments for astronomical observations are further aspects.

In particular, the IAU Division C, Commission C4 World Heritage and Astronomy identifies the cultural and astronomical values in a comparative analysis in order to assess the Outstanding Universal Value of observatories and archaeoastronomical sites with the aim to be nominated for inscription on the Unesco World Heritage List or on the Outstanding Astronomical Heritage (OAH) list. It also considers dark sky qualities of modern observatory sites. The IAU Division C Working Group Star Names does research on and makes catalogues of proper names for stars for the use by the international astronomical community and also to aid the recognition and preservation of intangible astronomical heritage. Both research associations aim to document, preserve and communicate heritage – material culture (tangible) as well as intellectual (intangible) heritage.

In this splinter, we would like to collect analyses of different habits and activities within the community of astronomers, namely the cultures of astronomy. Focus will be on analysing various data-sets to gain insight into particular astronomer's cultures and their influence on the culture of the surrounding society as well as on the astronomical community.

This splinter is dedicated to digital and computational humanities. Please submit only proposals for data-driven and more global studies, e. g. comparisons of more than one culture or whole sets of observatories or instruments of a certain type. This is not a conference for the presentations of one individual building or landscape feature per talk!

II.2. Acknowledgement

The conveners thank the German Astronomical Society (LOC) for this opportunity. The organising committee consisted of Michael Kramer (MPIfR Bonn), Claus Lämmerzahl (U Bremen), Stefanie Walch-Gassner (U Köln), Klaus Reinsch (U Göttingen), Janine Fohlmeister (AIP Potsdam), Renate Hubele (HdA Heidelberg), Markus Hundertmark (U Heidelberg), Thomas Kraupe (Planetarium Hamburg), Oliver Schwarz (U Siegen), Jörn Wilms (U Erlangen-Nürnberg).

1. Introduction

1. Astronomy in Culture

The Editors

Constellations had been defined by the ancients, millennia ago and probably everywhere on Earth. They formed patterns in the sky that helped to be remembered and it was necessary to remember them because of time reckoning. On the one hand, the stars during the night served as a natural clock while on the other hand, over the course of the year, they served as a calendar. Thus, the patterns where named after the patterns in nature that are observable during particular seasons, e. g. the Incas and several Aboriginal Australians named constellations (of dark clouds) after the animals that breed or give birth at a certain time of the year. The constellations that we use today, in contrast, are results of long-duration transformations through many different ancient religions. They probably have had similar old meanings in the cult of natural religions but these meanings are lost by transferring old images to new religions and adapt them to different settings in the other religion's climate zone and varying rituals.

For the reconstruction of the older true meanings, we need to combine philological, social and ethnological research in order to report their history.

In this book, we start with some Material Heritage of astronomy in Chapter 2, considering selected remnants of buildings in America, Africa and Europe, as well as the recent history of astronomical observatories.

Concerning the ancient history of our constellations that is described in textual sources, Chapter 3 provides studies of selected constellations: The Babylonian constellation of the Plough for which we present a new identification, and a very particular text from the area of Babylon in the middle of the first millennium. That said, we continue with some remarks on the transfer from the Babylonian to the Greek constellations, often influenced by intercultural misunderstandings, and continue with the next level of transformation of the ancient Graeco-Roman constellations in the Christian Middle Ages, in particular at the Carolingian court and in Dante Alighieri's poem. A parallel string of history evolved in the Islamic culture where scholars applied some of the ancient suggestions practically. Recognizing the chapter of Islamic history and some roots of the Islamic tradition in the Hebrew Book of Enoch, a report on the repetition of an experiment of measuring the longitudes on Earth that was carried out by Islamic scholars in the 10th century. A study of the transfers and transformation of the constellation Cetus from an ancient monster into the modern option to interpret it as a whale takes us through the millennia from old history to modern history.

Chapter 4 is dedicated to some astronomical heritage that is presented in modern planetariums and museums representing the modern culture. It starts with some indigenous concepts, asterisms and constellations, and some approaches how they are or will be included in the modern cultural habits in the according country. For instance, in India there is still use of the Hindu division of the zodiac while in Africa and South America, very often the indigenous traditions are overlapped with and integrated into Christian traditions. The papers that deal with these topics try to carefully outline the complicated balance between preserving the heritage and developing the country. Three essays on particular case studies (on the Brazilian flag, and the constellations Ursa Major and Cassiopeia) illuminate the richness of this research area. A historical discussions on naming after the discovery of further planets in our solar system, and an essay on cultural heritage concerning variable stars complete the second chapter.

While the essays in the previous chapters are limited to specific asterisms, the papers in the Chapter 5 presents some cross-cultural comparisons concerning the whole sky. A highlight is the network study of the patterns that have been stored in the planetarium software Stellarium but also some often neglected (but long established) knowledge on constellation families (groups) and the transfer and transformation through ancient cultures is summarised in this chapter. This summary is completed in Chapter 7 by the collection of sky culture descriptions from the planetarium software Stellarium. By including this online-published collection in our book, we compiled a proper documentation of it although it will be developed further as research goes on.

In Chapter 6, we also present some databases that are currently build for the documentation of material and immaterial astronomical heritage.

2. Why are Constellations significant?

Susanne M Hoffmann (Regensburg)

It is a common popular misunderstanding that constellations could have anything to do with astrology. The true meanings of constellations are often hidden in the cultural backgrounds of the stories we tell in planetaria and public observatories, and they are threefold:

• Time keeping (hours/ days/ months)

• Cultural calendar/ rites

• Simplification of communication among astronomers

In order to understand these points, we will discuss them one by one.

2.1. Origin of the constellations

Modern man has almost forgotten that the starry sky changes its appearance with the seasons. The constellation of Orion is only high in the sky in winter, while Andromeda is more visible in autumn. Modern amateur astronomy has defined landmarks for this according to the seasons and on the northern hemisphere, we speak of the spring triangle, summer triangle, autumn square,winter hexagon. However, constellations make this concept much more precise.

All ancient cultures have used such star patterns to determine the seasons. In the first instance, they always used constellations, i. e. flat patterns in the sky – for most cultures it was really such patterns of stars, i. e. star groups, star chains and other geometric arrangements (such as triangles, circles or polygons), but for some it was also pattern recognition in dark clouds of the Milky Way. It doesn't matter what exactly was used, the important thing is that the patterns in the sky served orientation in time.

The spatial aspect of orientation is also obvious: even if there was no pole star until about 200 years ago, travellers also used the stars for orientation in earlier times. As I said, however, for sedentary societies at the latest, determining the (annual) times was one of the most important basic prerequisites for agriculture and animal husbandry to function at all. It was therefore only possible to become sedentary when one could determine the time with the stars. In the sedentary societies, this was then learned more and more precisely, so that at some point (at the latest in the first millennium BCE) it was no longer only possible to use constellations (areas), but became necessary to use individual stars instead. The development in this direction started in China, Egypt and Mesopotamia already in the third millennium and became more and more sophisticated in the next two millennia. The extent to which the Inca, Maya, Aboriginal Australians and African peoples also did this is not known and will probably not be clarified due to the lack of written evidence – but it is more or less probable that they also had similar celestial calendars (depending on the climate zone and the associated need for accuracy).

Concluding however, the origin of constellations is that people wanted to (or even felt the necessity to) recognise patterns in order to determine the time and to orient in space.

2.2. How were the patterns determined?

Humans have a built-in perceptual-psychological talent for pattern recognition, teaches gestalt psychology. We always think of patterns in things we see, hear, and sense anyhow. When we see, we therefore speak of Gestalt-Seeing¹. Gestalt-seeing is what you do when you see animals in clouds, when you call a mountain in the Alps Watzmann because you think you see a reclining giant in it, or when you see the face of a man in the façade of a house: its windows as eyes, its door as beard or mouth.

Knowing that it is possible to recognise some animal in the stars near the celestial north pole with gestalt-seeing, we have to admit it is depends on the cultural and natural habitat which animal you think to see there. A general example: a Sami or Laplander, i. e. native Scandinavian, is unlikely to see a camel in the sky, an Arab, in contrast, is unlikely to see a moose or elk.

Figure 1.1.: Pattern recognition lets us easily imagine any animal.

If you ask the children in a planetarium, they will say fox or mouse, it could also be the Great Rat. In ancient times, however, the constellation was named Bear. Why? Well, because it always stands in a roughly northerly direction and therefore one can say for rough orientation: dear wanderer coming from the area of (today's) Greece or Turkey, you will arrive at the lands of the bears (Bern, Berlin and others with this heraldic animal – but above all further north), if you keep travelling towards the celestial she-bear.

So the basis lies in gestalt vision, the naming comes from the function – here specifically from orientation in space.

2.3. Cultural calendar: pictures for orientation in time

It is analogous with orientation in time. Where one can recognise some form of human being, the ancient cultures saw men and women and understood these figures with the names of their gods and demons. However, this was not done at random (diced, as it were), but in such a way that it fitted the cultural calendar. Spring, for example, is the time of awakening in all cultures – what is directly observable in nature (that lambs and calves are born around March/ April, i. e. around Easter, and trees become leafy again, in central Europe roughly in May), is also reflected by traditional customs, e.g. the rites of the Maypole in Central Europe, the corresponding Mars festival in Rome,² the traditional dance into May and the driving away of winter witches and demons in the night of Easter and in the night from April to May. In order to synchronize the Christian rites with the natural local traditions, also the Christian rituals of first communion and confirmation are actually initiation rites originate from traditional spring festivals.³

Such initiation rites also existed, separately for men and women, in Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt and Ancient Mesopotamia, of course. One of the Greek initiation rite for women (a disrobing ritual) is thematised in the star tale of the she-bear.⁴ So although the origin of the constellation's name is quite different (orientation in space, as this figure is circumpolar), a story is made of it in mythology to fit the cultural calendar.

The constellation of the Bear is high in the sky in the evening (not flat as in the Stellarium map above) when it is spring, i. e. when these initiation rites take place. Not only for women, also for men. The Attic initiation rite for men, the so-called Mysteries of Eleusis near Athens, was led by the fertility goddess Demeter. She could be seen (among others) in the constellation Virgo. The Greeks by no means saw in this celestial virgin a lady who was necessarily sexually untouched (as is the usage of the term virgin today), but rather generally a youthful-looking girl or a beautiful woman. Since the mother goddess Demeter has a daughter (with Zeus), she is certainly not virginal in the modern sense of the term, and the naming of the constellation (virgin) is therefore misleading.

However, the constellations of Bear (Ursa Major) and Maiden (Virgo) are high in the evening sky at the same time in spring, mirroring that the two initiation rites take place at the same time – in different places.

Slightly offset from these two constellations, one finds still further south the Centaur with the sacrificial animal (Centaurus et Lupus), the constellation symbolic of civilisation. Civilised man practices religion, sacrifices to the gods, meditates (reflects on his actions), prays (tries to plan, think into the future and asks for divine assistance, i. e. that none of the unforeseen obstacles may be too big).

All these ancient customs are, of course, forgotten today and overwritten by numerous other religions. However, they do explain where the names of the constellations come from and why the myths sometimes have to make such clumsy moves to tell a story. Jews, Romans, Christians, Muslims and others, who want to use the constellation of the bear, will of course not tell a story of the initiation rite in a natural religion. So they rewrite history, turn religion into mythology, mythology into a fairy tale and the fairy tale into an anecdote – and over the millennia the half-understood sermon comes out that is told in today's popular observatories.

2.4. Means of communication Constellations

Not only educators of astronomy have stopped thinking about the real meanings of the constellation. Modern astronomy research has also left its roots in time measurement behind since about 1850 CE. There is no longer any direct practical application of astronomy, but the science today is a subject that – as always – pushes the boundaries of mathematics and technology: Through applications in extreme areas it serves to a) develop new methods and technologies and b) thereby advance the questions of its own subject, how our universe and all the objects in it are constituted. The goal of astronomy is thus understanding the world, its foundation is its strong history⁵ and the expertise from pretty much all areas of knowledge that we would call mathematical-humanities or scientific-technical today.

So these modern astronomers – since about 1850 – had little need for the constellations in the traditional sense. Over the millennia they had also long since failed to understand the root of the names and the figures had long since degenerated into mindless entertainment value.

However, astronomers are only human, and if you want to talk about a star at a conference with other astronomers, it is rather awkward if you have to refer to it by its coordinates on the celestial sphere. If I stand up and talk about the star at 8:32:04.33 hours and +60°38'52.7 , probably nobody will know which one I mean. But if I talk about the one at the tip of the bear's nose", you'll know this right away (or with a glance at the above picture). This naming originates from ancient times. However, it is not in all cases as unambiguous as suggested here. Without ever being standardised, the name became established in the Almagest (2nd century CE).

2.5. Nota Bene: there are no western constellations

These are no Western constellations. It was not enforced authoritatively by an international authority, but by the fact that the Almagest was translated into different languages by Christians, Jews and Muslims, often commented on and used as a textbook for millennia. All three of these religions are from the Near or Middle East⁶ and, therefore, by name not Western. The Almagest was written in Africa (Alexandria, Egypt). Nothing of this is Western. The later Western culture only joined this ancient tradition; the Eastern (Chinese) one too, by the way, although later, through Jesuit imprinting. In any case, all these foreign cultures joined by conviction and not by authority (the IAU has only existed since 1919).

In any case – back to the constellations – since the 19th/ 20th century, the new astronomy has used the constellations to name the stars and galaxies that were now beginning to be studied. In addition to the naming in antiquity, from which the proper names of some stars developed, since 1603 there was the naming of the bright stars with a Greek letters plus the constellation name, then various attempts with numbers (numbers) plus constellation name. Even if a star has no handy proper name, the one at the tip of the bear's nose would still be quite long and unwieldy. But if I say omikron Ursae Majoris or 1 UMa, it is manageable enough.

The same applies to the galaxy UGC 1117. It is easier for most people when I speak of the Triangle Galaxy. It has its name not by descriptiveness (it is a beautiful spiral, not triangular at all), but because it lies in the constellation Triangle (Triangulum).

So today we use constellations essentially to simplify the names for celestial objects or make them human-readable.

2.6. Addendum: Note on Astrology

Astrology also has its roots in time measurement. The term horoscope literally means measuring or observing the hour, which means that for divination techniques in Graeco-Roman times, one could not only use the stars to determine the calendar, but also measure the hours of the night (during the day, of course, with the sun) and thus accurately describe the hour of a person's birth or a future hour.

The zodiac has its roots in the Babylonian lunar calendar.⁷ The lunar calendar was determined by the positions of the full moon, i. e. where – or more precisely, in which constellation – the full moon (or crescent moon) was located each month. It effectively doesn't matter which lunar phase is taken, most important is that it is always the same one. Thin moons are better than the full moon because the stars can be seen better around them. However, the moon must not be too thin, otherwise it is only observable in twilight and no stars can be seen at all.

So in the third and second millennium, people in the Near East developed their astronomy away from the pure lunar calendar, towards a sidereal lunar calendar or lunistellar calendar as described in MUL.APIN. From the traditional path of the moon, i. e. the ring of constellations in which the moon can cover the stars, a division into twelve parts became necessary for the calendar makers, because a year has twelve months (full moons).⁸

This division into twelfths was a feast for the soothsayers: They could illustrate their own art with the pretty pictures (constellations), even when these pictures no longer had anything to do with the twelfths, because they were shifted against each other: Since the Middle Ages, until today and for the next 23,000 years the astrological signs and the astronomical constellations do not match anymore.

2.7. Result

Summarizing, we argue here:

1. Constellations are not the root of astrology and astrology has nothing at all to do with constellations.

2. Constellation names (in preference over number tuples) make communication easier for most people, so they are a kind of non-mathematical frame of reference or position system.

3. Those who are familiar with constellations can navigate through time with them as a natural calendar (the better you know them, the better you can even determine the hours of the night) and …

4. … can also find the cultural calendar in them: be it the church year, the beginning of the Islamic and Jewish months, or the rites of natural religions.

All this is shown terrifically by the contributions in this book – starting from some hints in stone that seem to witness archaeologically that humans have observed at least the Sun and its changing points of rising and setting over the course of the year, and taking the reader through various cultures and histories up to the modern computer programs and software resources for displaying this archaic knowledge.

3. Keynote: UNESCO’s Universal Value at Night

Günther Wuchterl (Vienna)

Abstract: A paradox appeared in efforts to protect the firmament in the framework of the World Heritage Convention: the night sky, admired by all cultures, is seemingly too universal for the key concept of the Outstanding Universal Value. The text provides tools to resolve that paradox by noting that whenever the night is admired, utilised, seen or experienced, what matters is the physical interplay of light with a site. Thus we provide tools to work out contributions to the Universal Outstanding Value by introducing the concepts of (1) epoch skies, (2) cultural skies, (3) the sky as the fact-basis of science at a site, (4) sky-landscape-systems, (5) the authentic night-time appearance of artefacts and landscapes, as well as (6) intact night-habitats to sustain our planet's biodiverstiy for the majority of species, that are night-active.

German: Bei den Bemühungen zum Schutz des Firmaments im Rahmen der Welterbekonvention trat ein Paradoxon auf: der von allen Kulturen bewunderte Nachthimmel ist scheinbar zu universell für das entscheidende Konzept des Herausragenden Universellen Wertes. Der Text stellt Ansätze vor um dieses Paradoxon aufzuheben. Sie basieren auf der Erkenntnis, dass, immer wenn die Nacht bewundert, genutzt, gesehen oder erfahren wird, die physische Wechselwirkung des Lichts mit einer Stätte, einem Ort entscheidend ist. Um Beiträge zum Herausragenden Universellen Wert zu erarbeiten stellt der Text sechs Konzepte vor: (1) die Himmel historischer Epochen, (2) die kulturspezifischen Himmel, (3) den Himmels als Faktenbasis der Wissenschaft eines Orts oder einer Region, (4) die Himmels-Landschafts-Systeme, (5) das intakte Licht der Nacht als Voraussetzung für die Authentiziät von Artefakten und Landschaften bei Nacht, und, (6) das intakte Nachtlicht als Voraussetzung für die intakten Lebensräume zur Sicherung der Biodiversität jener Mehrheit der Spezies, die nachtaktiv sind.

3.1. Introduction

The Declaration in defence of the night sky and the right to starlight (UNESCO et al. 2007)¹ was moved on the island of La Palma, on April 20th, 2007. The National Geographic magazine announced The End of Night in Novem ber 2008.² To raise awareness of the rapidly rising flood of light, introduced by humans into the environment, UNESCO together with the IAU started an effort to increase the fraction of scientific heritage in the framework of the World Heritage Convention on the occassion of the International Year of Astronomy, 2009 (IYA).³

With night disappearing, and thus something changing globally, that was as self-evident for humanity, as the day, the quantification of the Outstanding Universal Value (OUV), a value independent of cultural preferences and thus apparent to all humanity, had to be worked out for this new situation, and possibly amended, with due attention to the convention and its guidelines.

The first versions of this text, were an effort to construct a technical toolbox for that purpose. They were originally written on a kind request of Clive Ruggles in the beginning of the endeavour, maybe in 2008, as General considerations for relatively dark starlight/ dark-sky areas with few or no direct cultural connections to set the stage for sites, that, seen from an astronomers perspective, are dominated by their night-sky. Examples are the last resorts of astronomy on remote mountaintops and the last areas of wilderness, far enough from urban development to be essentially⁴ free of artificial light. The remote mountain observatories may be viewed, as the habitat on Earth, of scientific astronomy with the best observing conditions characterised by a minimisation of effects of the earth's atmosphere, the wilderness as the habitat of species relying on and adapted to intact (natural) day-night-light-modulation.

The focus here is to set up a general strategy for sites where the more established approaches – in IUCN/ ICOMOS review procedures – cannot be followed, in particular for cases were the night sky, the firmament or the darkness is of key importance, and other values recognized by the convention, as buildings, remains or in general artefacts or apparent human activities related to a landscape or areas of importance for biodiversity, are missing or seemingly or apparently unrelated to the night.

Originally, the text was a kind of concept-collection for use in the Starlight and World Heritage initiative and its goal of Case Studies (Ruggles & Cotte 2012) and Full Case Studies (Ruggles 2017), in particular for two groups of Austrian sites in 2012⁵. In October 2015 the first Austrian Workshop on Astronomy and World Heritage⁶ was organised, by the Verein Kuffner-Sternwarte at the Vienna Natural History Museum, at the Großmugl Starlight Oasis proposed site with its giant Hallstat-period tumulus, and at the Museum MAMUZ in Asparn/ Zaya, resulting in an ICOMOS review and recommendations. In 2017, two Austrian sites were inscribed on the World Heritage List as part of the Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe. Key phenomena of the intactness of the natural light as the zodical light and the gegenschein had been recovered and documented in the Austrian Alps following the IYA.

Modern digital photography, capable of recording landscapes in starlight became widely available around 2010. Since 2015, also with sufficient sensitivity to depict motion in starlight with rates of 25 frames per second⁷.

A wide distribution of working representations of the firmament, including the almost inaccessible, disappearing night-sky phenomena as the zodiacal light, the Milky Way, the gegenschein and the zodiacal band became possible to display with the Stellarium sky-simulator – many thanks to Georg Zotti – and are now a key tool for illustrating light sources constituting intact night-light and authenticity at sites (Zotti & Wuchterl 2016).

The start of all efforts, that led to the approach explained here, is the concept of the Großmugl Starlight Oasis. It started as a tested of the Starlight Reserve Concept⁸ following the La Palma declaration (UNESCO et al. 2007) and developed into the Hallstatt-Großmugl concept after the 2015 workshop. The new concept, following an idea of Anton Kern, head of the prehistoric department of the Vienna Natural History Museum, combines the Hallstatt site with its prehistoric mine with the Hallstatt-era's remains of the network of settlements in central Europe. The light-related Motto, coined by Kern, brings together the necessary introduction of artificial light into the absolute darkness, that was created by humans with their salt-mines, and the Hallstatt era tumuli in natural light, including the giant one in Großmugl, as the last visible surface-remains⁹, that are still outstanding, in plain sunlight, moonlight and starlight, 2600 years after their construction. The concept and status were reported at the IAU General Assembly in Vienna in 2018.

Following the 2015 recommendations, the research project, Natural Night as a Habitat¹⁰ was conducted to develop and test concepts for light-management tools for the existing Kalkalpen and Dürrenstein World Natural Heritage sites. The project also worked out and tested educational concepts for nature-guides and park-rangers as well as methods and examples for how to transport the authenticity of the habitats with intact natural night, from the remote sites in the Austrian Alps into the accessible exhibitions of the Vienna Natural History Museum and its Digital Planetarium. Intactness, as discussed in this text was quantified using instruments developed for the IYA, as the IYA-lightmeter and documented for selected habitats in the world heritage sites and other protected areas, as the Danube wetlands (Donau-Auen) national park. Authentic displays for digital full-dome projection-systems for various night-situations and different seasons in the habitats of the world heritage sites were developed. They also include night-situations with audio-atmospheres in the Donau-Auen at high and low-water, as well as the Großmugl Starlight Oasis. They are available in the Vienna Natural History Museum and are part of the public exhibition and the Digital Planetarium schedule.

Intactness of the alpine night in Austria has been monitored continuously by the Kuffner-Observatory, since the IYA 2009, with sensor-networks in and around Vienna as well as along the main ridge of the Eastern Alps, extending, since 2020, westward to the Sonnblick high altitude observatory, the latter in collaboration with the Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie and Geodynamik (ZAMG). The role of sources contributing to light-immissions has been measured by area-and direction-complete helicopter campaigns – together with the city of Vienna and the Vienna Natural History Museum. The directional radiance of all light-sources of Vienna was recorded to quantify immission and immission-contributions of the city of Vienna to the total light-immission into the National Parks and World Heritage sites. Both to implement the argumentation described below – quantification of the existing light-immissions is required for efficient management of the intactness of light-flow at protected sites.

Concepts and progress were discussed and reviewed at the New Zealand Starlight Conference in October 2019, providing positive feedback in particular to the "waterfalľ’-argumentation, cf. Section 3.8, and summarised the progress, worldwide and at the host-site, the Aoraki Mackenzie Starlight Reserve, also a Case Study of the IYA Windows to the Universe.

For the Hallstatt-Großmugl Starlight Oasis process, a documentary movie, Landretter (All for the countryside), by Gesa Hollerbach has documented the progress for three years and had its world premiere at the 2019 Dok-Leipzig Film-festival¹¹, a couple of months before CoViD-19 became pandemic in the following winter. Due to the fundamental progress in camera technology and artistic excellence it was possible to bring the atmosphere of a starlight oasis in action at night-time and illuminated only by starlight, into the cinema, thanks to the unique material and the art of camera-woman and director of photography, Jennifer Günther. With the cinema-start in Germany in summer 2021 it is due time to revive the process of night-protection in the world heritage framework and to use the now existing tools, data and footage to develop their full potential.

This text gives the state of knowledge and the updated toolbox to do that and thus to save what can be saved of the firmament.

3.2. General Considerations

Starlight areas and observatories for current astronomical research near the limits of what is doable, at the best sites on the planet are particularly closely connected to the night sky. They share a common resource, impressive natural night skies and a common treat – artificial sky-brightening. Within the Starlight and World Heritage Initiative, cf. Ruggles & Cotte (2012), these sites were grouped as Windows to the Universe, windows for telescopes at the technological feasibility-limits and windows for the human naked-eye perception.

Unlike other sites, that have a relation that is more along the established existing world heritage sites, as artistic milestones of unique importance, monuments, buildings, cultural landscapes, remains of epochs in human history, exceptional natural beauty and places contributing to the biodiversity of the planet, they share a technical challenge: a key condition and essential element of their value, the night sky is too universal for the Universal Outstanding Value required for a world heritage site. That is essentially because there is only one universe and that cannot be associated to a state-party – i. e. is not within the national borders of a member of the World Heritage Convention. The convention requires a site, or a group of sites on the territory of a member state or a group of members.

To resolve the problem, it is necessary to localize the universe, more precisely the night-sky and associate it with a site in a way that is recognized by the convention's operational guidelines.

The text, originally on General considerations for relatively dark starlight/ dark-sky1 areas with few or no direct cultural connections is about concepts to achieve exactly that and thus associate the night-sky with a site as understood by the World Heritage Convention.

This revised and extended text includes the updates and lessons learned since its 2014/ 2015 versions, that were/ are available in the materials sections on the UNESCO/ IAU Portal to the Heritage of Astronomy¹².

3.3. The sky is not dark

We note that the common notion of a dark sky¹³, that is the often custom in the English language when referring to a night-sky that is little effected by artificial sky brigthening, in itself is reflecting a modern situation. That the sky initially appears dark when stepping out of places with artificial lighting or when stepping out of modern transport-machinery, is a consequence of current high artificial light-levels at night and human perception. With the eye adapted by following the naturally changing light through the twilight, a clear sky, that is a source of light – the starshine, appears bright, even without the moon when the starlight is not obstructed by clouds. Typically for the dark-adapted eye the sky appears bright and the ground dark, unless, it is covered by high albedo material such as snow or consists of limestone. For many astronomers a sky without effects of brightening – artificial or due to the moon – is also referred to as deep sky, in accordance with the depth experienced by many under the firmament or when looking through a telescope at a good site.

Following its name, the pioneering International Dark Sky Associaction, IDA established the dark sky term in various generations of certifications, the latest are the dark sky places concepts. Similarly named are the dark sky sites and preservers of the Royal Astronomical Society and Parcs Canada that emphasise the absence of urban bright skies and effects irritating night perception as blinding. The European concepts of Villes et Villages Étoilés (ANPCEN), and the 'Starlight sites' of the Foundation Starlight focus on the presence of the stellar light contributions to the authentic appearance of the nighttime environment.

Neither the absence of something nor the presence of a natural phenomenon alone can constitute a value in the framework of the world heritage convention as Clive Ruggles and Michel Cotte point out in there introductory remarks of the First Thematic Study on Astronomy and World Heritage (Ruggles & Cotte 2012).

We thus approach from various argument-directions with the World Heritage Convention and its operational guidelines in mind, trying to built an universal value, universal in the sense, that it can be appreciated and argumentation for it followed independently of all cultural prerequisites, i. e. by all humans. The universal value, in that context, is a companion of the universal rights, that are owned by all people.

3.4. The end of night¹⁴

One way to look at the value of an intact night-sky for world heritage in our context is to look at the challenges posed to the integrity and authenticity of existing sites by the relatively recent dramatic rise of artificial sky-brightening connected to light pollution. While a relatively intact night was self-evident even long after astronomers first noted light pollution in the 19th century¹⁵, since the early 2000s it is evident that the night-time situation has significantly changed the appearance of many world heritage sites at night. Part of this may even come from efforts to enhance the appearance of the heritage itself – by lighting the site at night. At least partly this was necessary to counteract the trend of sites disappearing from the skyline or landscapes due to the ever increasing urban night-time light-levels and the conversely appearing and concurrently spreading dark-corners¹⁶ and flat perspectives that are created as a side effect.

Thus we approach the question of evaluating the comparative increase in evidence for the value of sites with a good night sky. The increase of value – the increased value of a more limited resource – is concurrent with the spreading of the use of artificial light at night. We thus follow the proven path of getting a hint for understanding of a value by looking at how the resource diminishes and what might have been lost at existing sites.

Similar to the situation of living species facing extinction, the value of the now almost lost authentic night-time culture of many areas and periods rises with the diminishing asset. Given their proximity to the Großmugl site, that we discussed in an extended case study for the astronomy and world heritage initiative (Ruggles & Cotte 2012, Ruggles 2017) we use the two World Heritage Sites in Vienna: its historic centre and the Schönbrunn Imperial Castle to illustrate what integrity and authenticity¹⁷, and their loss, may mean at night, in a cultural environment.

A loss of integrity – half the time for most of things?

Light is an integral part of access to any artefact, as our visual system is a key pathway towards grasping nature and human artefacts – our visual door of perception is comparatively wide. Thus light is often the primary medium that physically connects humans with their tangible heritage. By modulating this connection it is a key factor in authenticity whenever seeing plays a role.

Protecting the integrity and authenticity of the night-time environment may well be upon the most outstanding challenges of world heritage efforts in populated areas¹⁸. A starlight oasis is the instrument for that.

The integrity of the night-view and night-scape and the authenticity of nightculture is presently a general challenge. As it is the case for many other sites, there is little perspective to see the buildings of the heritage site of the historic centre of Vienna in the authentic night-light of the time when most of them were built. Until approximately the enlightenment¹⁹, landscapes, buildings, sacral and representational as well as monuments were seen in starshine and moonshine. So evident for the contemporary as is the daylight view for us now. These night-time views certainly were key, if not the cause of the link for festivities connected to the moon.

As obvious as it was for the mayors until the mid of the 19th century, that arranged switched on artificial lighting only in moonless nights, it was obvious that there is enough light at night with the moon up or outside the period of long winter nights of central and northern Europe.

Yet today it is impossible to see Schönbrunn-castle or the St. Stephens cathedral in the historic centre of Vienna, as the contemporaries could, for about half of the time – from sunset to sunrise. Actually much of the representative luxury of such sites, certainly the castles, may well be related to the particularities of night-culture. To illustrate that we briefly move from one enlightened court in Vienna to another, the one of Frederick II, in Potsdam, (Figure 1.2) in a period of repeated warfare between the two. In enlightened courts the ultimate luxury was the crown-light (candelabrum). One of them (not the one in Figure 1.2) that was in use by the King who enjoyed dining with Voltaire costed the equivalent of ten annual salaries of his court musician Karl Phillip Emanuel Bach²⁰. There is now considerable evidence that the extension of activity into the night by itself was a highly paid privilege and constituted a key element of the ultimate luxury. Being able to afford to sleep during the day and sustain night-time activity against the classical dangers of darkness was a very high, maybe one of the ultimate social privileges.

Figure 1.2.: Friedrich II playing the flute under the crown-light, symbol of ultimate luxury – light levels were 5 Lux measured in a reconstruction experiment ca. 2012. Painting 1852 by Adolf Menzel, Flötenkonzert Friedrichs des Großen in Sanssouci (public domain).

A surprise came to technicians and custodians of the Stiftung Preussischer Schlösser and Gedenkstätten, when, with large effort – candles are not the best friends of fire-chiefs in precious castles – they reproduced the 18th century light situation of the flute-playing monarch in the Konzertzimmer des Neue Palais at Potsdam: 5 Lux²¹ at most was the shocking result, and a very dim impression for all involved, yet they discovered the fascinating way the room came to live with all the candles in all the mirrors and the crown-light creating a Christmas tree atmosphere. Of course unlike in the old days the people came into the royal light not from a dark park outside, not through a sequence of court-rooms with slowly increasing candle-contingent and smaller crownlights, they came through rooms housing a couple of modern ceiling floodlights to show all the magnificence as close to the daylight view as present lighting technology can provide. Certainly what was also lost is the art of seeing at night – we are culturally night-blind.

Night-time integrity and Night-time authenticity

We return to the outside and back to Schönbrunn castle (Vienna). In a way the Großmugl Starlight Oasis can be viewed as also protecting a night-time part of the nearby world heritage sites of the city of Vienna and the imperial castle at Schönbrunn. For the latter a significant effort was made to reconstruct the authentic daytime view as part of the integrity of the façade not to the least because the Schönbrunn-yellow colour that was an iconic colour of the Austro-Hungarian empire. But while the daytime colour now delivers an authentic framework for the representation-ensemble at Schönbrunn, the nighttime colours and appearance are modern in many aspects of the word. The Gloriette decoration building will not appear as a moon-lit accent in the imperial gardens in pale moonlight as viewed from a candle-lit mirror ball-room, it has to fight for contrast with modern ball-room illumination, a fight for the attention of the indoor viewer that can only be won using lighting technology on the megawatt scale.

All this is clear evidence that night-time authenticity in general should go on a red list of culture facing extinction in most places relevant for world heritage.

It illustrates what we are loosing at a moment when the (integrity and authenticity of) night-culture is mostly neglected and the apparatus for a scientific description is in status nascendi. Even the expert is in difficulty to make progress in intellectually grasping the masterpiece without the original at hand, without an authentic perspective.

A starlight oasis – a place where people live with a relatively good, moderately artificially brightened night sky – provides a conservation tool for night views, night-scape and night culture: I will progress with putting together astronomical/ physical references that are necessary for keeping the light of a site intact²². During the night-time we de-facto have the technical means to fully control the light, the contrast and the colours of almost anything. So far, this opportunity has often been used to change the night-light of world heritage sites in a way, that arguably compromised night-time integrity and night-time authenticity.

In summary and emphasising the return to the positive value of a moderately intact night-time environment²³, from the absence of a problem to the presence of a value/asset, to quantify what is a valuable night-sky-ruin, if you like: a comparatively well preserved night-sky provides not only the astronomical authenticity of a site – including a physical context for astronomical narration – but also the upper half of landscape integrity, the integrity of the night-light and in consequence the integrity of the night-time environment (e. g. by allowing the original species to sustain life and exhibiting their authentic behaviour²⁴) and thus the basis of an authentic heritage of natural and cultural monuments and artefacts – indoor and outdoors. If the curator's effort to show pieces of art in a better way, by bringing the daylight into an exhibition is action towards the goal of authenticity, the starlight oasis, with its still correct night-light is the tool for similar efforts at night. It brings the night-light to our heritage in places where people still live and conserves the night-time authenticity.

In conclusion, a site that preserves the integrity of night-time phenomena in an inhabited area is the only way to preserve culture at night in an authentic way, thus the role of a starlight oasis reaches far beyond the gateway to the skies and the astronomical heritage²⁵.

3.5. Relatively dark starlight areas – Zodiac and Milky-Way as pragmatic references

The Starlight Reserve document²⁶ gives the skies of inhabited areas, of small villages reasonably free from light pollution as a prototype for a starlight oasis²⁷. That implies access to the Milky Way in the better cases and roughly reflects the light-pollution situation of the 1960s when the Milky Way still could be seen from cities with more than a Million inhabitants.

We will therefore assume a conspicuous appearance of the Milky Way and the visibility of the IAU recognized constellations, including the zodiac as constituting a starlight oasis' sky and the typical context for the following discussion²⁸.

To visualise what this means, we note that this essentially results in a nakedeye sky showing all the types of phenomena integrated into the state-of-the-art sky-simulator Stellarium²⁹. Stellarium – as the sky in a starlight oasis³⁰ – is not complete but it shows a practical essence of what is generally needed for educational and cultural purposes, e. g. one naked eye galaxy, one naked eye fuzzy cluster as Praesepe, one naked eye globular cluster as M13.

3.6. The night-sky of a site as a tool of visual astronomy, education and a monument of science

An important part of science is the concept of evaluating the quality of a theory (or falsifying a competing theory) by comparing with measurements that are based on a reality – an objective world or Karl Popper's world one – that can be measured. Measuring usually means to quantify with a given measure or unit or standard following rules of measurement or measurement concepts. The resulting number in terms of the unit then allows to connect to a mathematical language that is constituting/ system-forming in particular for astronomy. That method has been the epistemological model for a dominating stream in many sciences.

While records of measurement are a key practical element, they are not the primary source for the progress-ranking in the competition of theories, because they may contain, not only errors, but hidden, often implicit assumptions, made by the observer during the measurement process. They may also lack contingent information (say the air-temperature when the measurement was taken) that may turn out to be necessary to evaluate the number relevant for the comparison with the theory and to decide its correctness, or passing or failing a test in the language of critical rationalism.

The physical (material) basis, the real system is an essential part in the authenticity of scientific culture, as it is the ultimate reference for correctness. It is and constitutes the authentic original of a phenomenon explained by a theory within its claimed realm of applicability/ range of validity³¹. The very concept of truth as a correspondence of theoretical results to facts relies on the availability of the reality-reference.

An illustrative example are units and standards used in measurements. To get a representation for the unit, a standard has to be measured. The most famous one may be the meter-prototype (mètre des archives, Urmeter). This is the factual basis of the meter. To determine a distance in meters, in a way that other people can check, first the prototype has to be measured an then the distance in question. Thus the prototype is necessary as a factual basis of the method. If the method of measurement changes, usually in search for better accuracy, the prototype is remeasured and so on. While the meter is now realised by a time-interval and the speed of light, the most striking example in our context is the kilogram prototype for mass that is still a carefully kept piece of metal near Paris. It was the factual basis of mass in our measurement system, until November 2018 when it was replaced by the electric kilogram defined via the Planck constant and measured with a Kibble-balance.

For the astronomical systems, as the reference-systems for motion, Earthrotation or solar-system relations, the standard is what is in the sky. As an example: the coordinated universal time is measured with high-accuracy clocks but carefully adjusted to the Earth's rotation by monitoring it relative to astronomical objects. This is one applied example of the central role of the factual basis in astronomy and science in general.

We discuss the sky here as a fact harvesting field that constitutes the reality that is the basis of the central progress paradigm of science: the factual reference. A theory is a better theory if it has a better correspondence with measurements i.e. derived numbers from a measurement practice. That measurement practice operates on an agglomerate of natural phenomena that is approached in a particular way. These measurement conventions are integral part of deriving a scientific result and are adapted to the local situation by separating contingential information that allows certain approximations to be applied to arrive at the measurement numbers.³²

For example to obtain a position of a celestial body, it needs to exceed a particular contrast with respect to the sky in the background – that is necessary both for an image perceived by the human eye or recorded on a detector. The fact that stars are not seen during the day is a consequence of the fact that the sky is too bright during daytime. Similarly the fact that the stars and planets relevant for forming the fact-basis for the Renaissance Astronomy are visible and thus can be used in the truth system of science depends entirely on the sky quality. The cornerstone sky-features for Kepler's laws are for example the stars of the ecliptic band that are necessary to obtain, as Tycho did, high precision planetary position relative to them and to allow the respective coordinate systems to be built with their help in particular to set the foundations of accurate equinoxes, and last but not least, the planet's visibility. For the astronomical renaissance the sky necessary for authentic science at a site, is in practice a sky showing planets, their visibility phenomena and the respective reference stars. The easiest way to quantify that as a criterion of authenticity for this body of science is to use Tycho's catalogue or method and require roughly stars down to magnitude six to be visible with the naked eye. That again brings us to the Milky Way-sky of a starlight oasis.

Figure 1.3.: Kepler at Linz: The bright planets Jupiter and Venus are readily visible to the right of the statue, but perception of constellations is even compromised in the conspicuous case of Orion (to the left) under the urban conditions in the city of Linz. It is one of the values of a starlight oasis to conserve the authentic sky at a site as a monument of science of important epochs. Image: March 2012, Herbert Raab, Linzer Astronomische Gemeinschaft.

For ancient Egypt the authentic sky would be one at least showing the stars forming the Decan constellations, followed by a large gap concerning importance, the planets and the Egyptian and Hellenistic constellations.

For Babylonian astronomy a sky constituting the fact-basis would be one preserving the respective constellations, normal stars, ziqpu stars and definitely the classical planets, as well as the cornerstone rise-setting phenomena for stars contained in the body of cuneiform texts. Certainly this would also serve the goal of conserving the authentic zodiac as a landmark for many of the modern (astronomical) cultures.

An authentic appearance of the moon and consequently moonlight is assumed to be self-evident here, but with further sky-brightening issues of concern my soon arise, in particular for the first light under some circumstances and the earthshine. City light levels recently lead to the loss of the authentic appearance of total lunar eclipses, as was first noticed in about 2012. However, given the continuous fast growth in light-levels at night, also during the second decade of the century, it is not unthinkable that, we might loose the moon for certain lunar-phases in urban areas unless they are protected.³³

A question of authenticity may arise if starlight oases are used as monuments for the scientific sky of an epoch and are located somewhat outside the historic centres of that particular epoch. Could the Großmugl Starlight Oasis provide the science-sky for the Renaissance astronomy performed in the historical center of Vienna? Evaluation of that issue rests on what displacement renders a sky not characteristic for its use. As the changes due to the different geographical locations of cities and their environments, are overall minor on the naked-eye scale, we may take Ptolemy's climates as a reference for skylocality classification that sets a distance scale for what sky is still authentic for a site. A more quantitative way would be to compare the typical accuracy of archeoastronomical alignments, that is for a number of reasons³⁴ on the few degrees scale, just as a starting point. If we take, e. g. the Keplerian sky as one spanning in spread the localities in Kepler's biography, we also arrive at a spread of a few degrees in latitude and longitude for the authentic range of Kepler-skies³⁵. Thus we consider a sky authentic for a particular location or epoch as long as it is a few geographical degrees within that locations or historical centres of the epoch, respectively and consequently the sky (not the landscape horizon) of a starlight oasis is considered authentic for distances on the order of two geographical degrees or approximately 250 km. This gives an interesting perspective of globally conserving an authentic sky of all human cultures and epochs by a network of Starlight-Oasis separated by approximately 500 1000 km.

In summary, the relatively intact night-sky of a starlight oasis conserves the factual basis of the intangible part of the scientific tradition and constitutes a key element of its truth-and progress³⁶-concepts. While from a positivistic point of view the factual basis is the reality (or one of many realities), from the point of view of other schools of thought it is a construction or narration, but undisputed is its role as a, if not the most important component of the scientific method. Protecting this component of the method in the case of astronomy means protecting its origins. The particularities of the night-sky at a given location and the authentic situation for an epoch make it a monument of science for the scientific tradition at the site. This complements and completes the heritage of buildings and instruments at a site. And for a considerable fraction of the history of astronomy the human eye alone was the instrument or the detector, until the telescopic revolution changed everything.

3.7. The authentic sky of an epoch – Starlight oases supporting the culture of the night and authenticity of heritage sites

While the progress on science heritage is a key objective of the thematic study (Ruggles & Cotte 2012), the night-time environment or night-time landscape constitutes a part of the integrity and authenticity of many sites. While it is a standard conservation issue to protect the landscape and setting of a site under pressure by human activities (building pressure, deforestation) it is much less common to consider the pressures on the sky (air-pollution for important daytime-views being a notable exception). That is mainly because, until relatively recently, we did not have the technology or it was much less practical to modify the sky compared to the landscape. Humanity developed abilities to manipulate stones, building-blocks or the shape of a landscape but not the sky. With industrialisation that changed dramatically and even more so with the availability of electric light and in particular the availability of the energy required to change the sky.

The natural-light night-time culture in Europe essentially started to be modified with the introduction of public urban light (starting with Paris, 1625). The natural night, with its illumination levels in high population density urban areas, reduced by higher built street-canyons was challenged by introduction of electric street-lights concurrent with industrialisation needs (in continental Europe, Steyr, 1884) and started to