Protect the night sky

Abstract

The night sky should be recognised as a cultural, scientific and natural heritage which should be protected and conserved for current and future generations. For a long time, the stars served humanity well: a calendar and the first GPS to navigate the ocean. They also inspired storytelling of gods and heroes. Jupiter and Mars for example, gods for the Roman state until they were replaced by Christianity and Perseus and Orion, heroes in Greek mythology. The stars inspired astronomers like Copernicus and Galileo who revolutionised our thinking by displacing earth as being at the centre of the universe and Giordano who extended our understanding of the universe by proposing that the stars were distant suns. In Malta, celestial objects are referred to in some proverbs, words of wisdom based on experience passed on to us by our forefathers, such as: for weather purposes, “il-kwiekeb tegħmeż għandna r-riħ”, when the stars flicker expect the weather to become windy or stormy; in agriculture, “iż-żrigħ u t-tilqim fil-qamar qadim”, farmers should sow seeds and graft trees when there is a waning moon.