Space Week Mural

This week is "theme week" in the Middle School, and this year's theme is SPACE! I was asked to come up with an art project to do with all of my classes today, and I decided on a mural of the night sky. Since we are experiencing construction in the MS, there is a GIGANTIC white temporary wall in the Atrium, and many people have asked me this year when I planned to paint something on it. This seemed like the perfect time...

More specifically, the mural is the winter night sky. The sky is more splendid in the winter than in other seasons, partly because cold air is normally dryer, hence clearer, than warmer air; but the main reason is that on winter evenings the richest region of the sky is in full view. The sky changes from month to month through the year in intervals of two hours in a single night. The stars we painted today are those that are visible in Jan-March, but if you go out between 10:00-12:00pm on February 15th, this is the exact sky you would see!

The degree of brightness, or Magnitude, of each star is represented on this mural- the larger the shape, the brighter the star. Also shown on this mural are the groups of stars called constellations- pictures in the sky of people, animals and other things. For thousands of years, people have looked up at the sky and wondered about it. To help make sense of what they saw, people long ago played a game. They drew lines between the stars, filled in the rest with their imagination, and created constellations. To early cultures, this “game” was serious business. People needed to be familiar with the stars because the constellations, which move around the sky during the year, told them when the seasons would change (from this they knew when to plant crops or prepare for the cold) and they would help guide ships and boats on the open sea. Here are a couple of pics in progress and the final sky :)