Glow-in-the-dark Star-Map

I love star-gazing. I just can’t stop myself from pulling out my star map on a frosty winter’s night and lying on the ground. As my eyes dilate, I gape at the celestial jewels, furthering my knowledge of the ‘last frontier’. 

Last winter, it all began with a small pamphlet someone (that’s you, KCR!) got for us, which charted out the galaxy in extremely basic constellations.

 I found Cassiopeia, which is noticeably strong, even with a city glow. Branching out from Cassiopeia, the ‘Camel’ as the Arabs call it, I moved to Orion and Pleaides—both beautiful also.

But there, my wonderfully simple map gave out.

And to my delight, I discovered another galaxy-atlas that had been hiding in plain sight for the last decade or so. My mother had picked up this poster for wall decorations, but I annexed it from the décor department.

Somewhere along my journey of astronomy, I found this in the Bible. It jumped out at me, right off the black and white in the middle of Amos actually.

Amo 5:8 He who made the Pleiades and Orion, and turns deep darkness into the morning and darkens the day into night, who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out on the surface of the earth, the LORD is his name; 

You can probably imagine my elation that the same constellations I had come to love were in the Word of God.

Recently, I wanted to make a duplicate of the map that would glow in the dark. I asked my sister if I could use some black cloth she had and she tromped upstairs to her bedroom and quite literally shimmied to the top of her closet fixtures—brownie points for her upper body strength. And she also let me use the glow-in-the-dark paint/glue she had—really awesome.

I shined a light up from underneath a glass desk and traced the constellations with the paint. When I was completed, the cloth was smattered with dabs of white glue, the entire galaxy was circumscribed by blue and the constellations were put together with orange . It looked tremendous. I included some pictures. I couldn’t get any of the mosaic in the dark—but trust me, the thing looks incredible.

I tacked the thing to the ceiling right above my top bunk bed, just where I could see it. It’s almost like looking at the stars.

Anyway, I wanted to tell you guys all about this. I hope that you can get into star-gazing like I have and don’t forget, it’s biblical!