Eli Whitney Museum

Maps help us understand where we are. Some of the very first maps noticed patterns in night skies. Everywhere East and West, North and South, ancient cultures gave names to bright stars and saw pictures that tied them together. The Greek names are familiar: Andromeda, Aquarius, Ares, for example. The Stars predicted season and directions. It's not so surprising that some people believed that the Stars influenced other things.

We will stick to mapping the stars as we see them. We will look at new and old tools for finding star.s We will compare star charts from China, Egypt and Babylon. We will construct the Star Chart of your constellation, the stars under which you were born, in LEDs that will glow in your room at night.