This is the story of ATLAS
-Ancient star wisdom with a modern twist-
As the legend goes, Orion was a great hunter who boasted that he could kill every animal on Earth. This did not sit well with Mother Gaia, so she created a giant Scorpion to hunt the hunter. For the rest of time the two would be locked in a heavenly battle. Orion and Scorpius have been revered by people around the world since the beginning of time. It is perhaps the oldest story ever told. This is because together the two constellations can be used to track the precession of the equinoxes, a feature of Earth’s wobble as it spins. This allows mankind to track time on many scales - a heavenly clock, calendar, and compass for those who can read it.
This ancient knowledge has been immortalized into ATLAS in a very specific way. From one end of the table, the stars in the sky of Orion are precisely replicated. From the other end, the stars of Scorpius. In the center rests an Obsidian sphere marking the exact intersection of the galactic and ecliptic planes. This designates the Summer Solstice from the Scorpius side and the Winter Solstice from the Orion side. One walk around the table symbolizes one Earth rotation around the Sun, serving as an annual calendar. By replicating the exact orientation of the stars as they appear today, ATLAS also serves as a time stamp of when it was made, 2023AD. If it were shot into deep space, an intelligent being could read this star map and determine exactly where and when it came from.
A True Atlas.
To shine like their celestial counterparts, each star in this table was hand forged out of the purest gold and silver available. The size of each star corresponds to its brightness as seen from Earth, replicating the heavens and perfectly embodying the adage As Above So Below.
To visualize how the orientation of stars can be used to track time, we can compare the changes in Orion over 100,000 years. Below are two photos showing what Orion would have looked like in 50,000BC and what it will look like in 50,000AD.
ATLAS is an exact reflection of the heavens as seen from Earth in 2023AD. To achieve this level of perfection, the most accurate modern star maps were used.
This map of our sky shows the Galactic and Ecliptic paths for a year. The galactic plane is an imaginary line that slices our galaxy in half. The ecliptic plane is the apparent path of the Sun through the sky. Where the two lines intersect mark the summer and winter solstices, the longest and shortest days of the year. These dates are approximately June 21 and December 21 on our calendar. The lines are curved because of Earth’s tilt or wobble as it spins. This feature of our planet is the reason for our changing seasons, which ultimately helped facilitate life. Earth’s tilt is currently at 23.4 degrees off the ecliptic plane and it takes almost 26,000 years to complete one full “wobble”. This journey takes us through all 12 zodiacs and is known as the Procession of the Equinoxes.
ATLAS compacts all of this knowledge into a unique design. A simple yet elegant piece of Solid Art that answers the question: Where are we?
An Ode to the Heavens, and a map of our place in it
