THE EMU IN THE SKY

A high-quality poster of this magnificent
award-winning photograph by Barnaby Norris

This superb high-resolution poster printed on heavyweight (250gsm)
art-quality paper shows the Aboriginal "emu-in-the-sky" constellation, standing above the emu engraving in Kurung-Gai Chase National Park. The photo won its creator, Barnaby Norris, a prize in the prestigious New Scientist "Eureka" awards.

To see the "constellation", look at the dark dust-clouds, not the stars! Here's a tracing of the emu to help you see it:

tracing

Scroll down this web page to find out more about this image and the emu.

emu

Caption:
Composed of dark clouds of dust in the Milky Way, the Emu rises above an Aboriginal rock-engraving in Kuring-Gai Chase National Park, Sydney, Australia. She stands upright above her engraving only at the time each year when the emus lay their eggs – an important food for the Ku-ring-gai Aboriginal people. Quite unlike European constellations which are traced out by stars, the Emu is traced by the mysterious dark spaces between the stars. See her head and beak at the top right, her long neck stretching down to her body in the centre, and her legs trailing to the lower left. This powerful image in the sky is reflected in the ancient Aboriginal engraving in the rock below. We acknowledge and respect the traditional owners of this land, and thank the National Parks and Wildlife Service for helping preserve these wonderful legacies of human history and achievement. For more information see www.emudreaming.com

Purchasing this Poster

Our apologies - This poster is now out of print.

If you have any questions, please email Cilla on cilla@emudreaming.com

About this picture

Many Aboriginal groups have stories about the “Coalsack” – the famous dark cloud next to the Southern Cross. Some see it as the head of a lawman, or a possum in a tree, but many groups tell stories of a great emu whose head is the Coalsack, and whose neck, body, and legs are formed from dust lanes stretching across the Milky Way. It’s easy to make out the emu in a dark autumn sky, and once you’ve seen it, the Milky Way will never look the same again.

Below it is the emu engraving, one of thousands of finely constructed engravings drawn by the Guringai people hundreds of years ago, and still visible in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, north of Sydney. Sadly, the Guringai people vanished soon after the arrival of the British in 1788.

A few years ago, Hugh Cairns of Sydney University pointed out that this engraving looks more like the Emu in the Sky than a real emu. Furthermore, the Aboriginal artists oriented the engraving to line up with the Emu in the Sky at just that time of year when real-life emus are laying their eggs. To illustrate this, Ray and Barnaby decided to take a photo of the engraving with the Emu in the Sky correctly positioned above it. The poster shows the constellation positioned above the engraving as it appears in real life in Autumn.

Photographing these engravings is tricky. The grooves are shallow and frequently obscured by natural undulations in the rock. Received wisdom is to photograph them at sunrise or sunset, when the low angle of the Sun outlines the grooves with shadows. But we can’t always wait for sunset, and even then the resulting photo is likely to be marred by shadows of nearby trees.Instead, Barnaby and Ray decided to replace the Sun by a 1000 Joule studio flash (emitting something like 1MW of light), together with batteries and an inverter for use at remote sites. This low-angle flash technique took care of the engraving, but what about the sky?

Since the night sky in the National Park is now spoiled by the streetlights of nearby Sydney, they decided to photograph it from Siding Spring Mountain, near Coonabarabran. A further challenge is that the emu stretches half-way across the sky, so doesn’t fit in the field of view of a normal lens. A fish-eye lens on an equatorial mount would do the trick, but would distort the image, preventing a realistic comparison with the engraving. So instead they made a mosaic of smaller images that could be stitched together in software. Furthermore, by taking a series of short exposure images, they wouldn’t need an equatorial drive, as they could correct for sky rotation in software. Having taken the photos, Barnaby spent two months stitching the hundreds of images together, working out how to correct for the distortions and sky rotation while keeping the shape true to the projection seen by the human eye from the engraving site. The result was magnificent (see above) and in August 2007 won Barnaby a $2000 prize in the New Scientist Eureka science prizes.

About the photographer

Barnaby Norris is a post-doctoral fellow in astrophysics at Sydney University. He has worked on a number of short films, music videos, and commercials, either as Director or Cinematographer. The short film Snow, for which he was Director of Photography, was one of 11 international short films, selected from thousands submitted, featured at the Cannes film festival in 2006. He then left the film world to study physics at Sydney University, and went on to do a PhD in astrophysics.

Emu Dreaming is a registered Australian Business (ABN 19639499560), run by Cilla Norris. The goal of Emu Dreaming is to promote outreach and research in Australian Aboriginal Astronomy. All proceeds from sales on this website support research on Aboriginal Astronomy.