Observations of red-giant variable stars by Aboriginal Australians

Abstract

Aboriginal Australians carefully observe the properties and positions of stars, including both overt and subtle changes in their brightness, for subsistence and social application. These observations are encoded in oral tradition. I examine two Aboriginal oral traditions from South Australia that describe the periodic changing brightness in three pulsating, red-giant variable stars: Betelgeuse (Alpha Orionis), Aldebaran (Alpha Tauri), and Antares (Alpha Scorpii). The Australian Aboriginal accounts stand as the only known descriptions of pulsating variable stars in any Indigenous oral tradition in the world. Researchers examining these oral traditions over the last century, including anthropologists and astronomers, missed the description of these stars as being variable in nature as the ethnographic record contained several misidentifications of stars and celestial objects. Arguably, ethnographers working on Indigenous Knowledge Systems should have academic training in both the natural and social sciences.

The Australian Journal of Anthropology (2018)

References in corpus (5)

• Australian Aboriginal Geomythology: Eyewitness Accounts of Cosmic Impacts?
• Did the ancient egyptians record the period of the eclipsing binary Algol - the Raging one?
• Dawes Review 5: Australian Aboriginal Astronomy and Navigation
• Shifting Milestones of Natural Sciences: The Ancient Egyptian Discovery of Algol's Period Confirmed
• Aboriginal Astronomical Traditions from Ooldea, South Australia, Part 1: Nyeeruna and the Orion Story

Cited by in corpus (1)

• The Planets in Indigenous Australian Traditions