Photo of the Month (October 2024 Edition): The most beautiful constellation in all the heavens

After three long autumns with the Polar Star as my guide, I returned to Brazil in January, as I shared in my story Change. While in the Northern Hemisphere, I missed many things, among them seeing the Southern Cross in the night sky. Since my return, I had a personal goal to capture a photo of this small but deeply symbolic constellation—the smallest of all in Greek mythology.

The Southern Cross was already catalogued in ancient Egypt, but it gained fame during the era of European navigations as a point of reference in the unfamiliar Southern Hemisphere. Beside it lies the Coalsack Nebula, described along with the Southern Cross by Master João, an astronomer on a voyage led by Pedro Álvares Cabral to India. This journey, tragically, became known as the beginning of Brazil. In a letter to the king of Portugal, written in April 1500, Master João described the voyage’s location, referencing known spots along the African coast, a mysterious map of Abya Yala’s shores, and this dark patch in the night, the Coalsack, which alongside the Southern Cross is a stunning sight for astronomical observation and astrophotography.

The four stars forming the Southern Cross, inherited from Greek mythology, are also part of other cultures’ sky stories. From the Mapuche and Inca to the Javanese and Maori, these stars hold different names and meanings across various mythologies. The most beautiful interpretation, however, comes from the Kalapalo people, who see the stars and the nebula together. For them, the stars are bees emerging from their hive, represented by the Coalsack.

But it was in 1854, in his book Voyage of the Liberdade, that Joshua Slocum, the first person to sail solo around the world, made his verdict. The Southern Cross, Slocum wrote, is the “most beautiful [constellation] in all the skies.”

I may have a soft spot for the Greek constellation Scorpio, which I use to locate the center of the Milky Way in my astrophotography. But who am I in this vast universe to disagree with Slocum? He knew the stars and seas like no one else and understood the enchantment of the night sky in the middle of the ocean.

This photo of the month edition is, thus, dedicated to the navigator who, as recounted in the book Sailing Alone Around the World, was at the helm of the Northern Lights  vessel when he encountered a friend captaining the vessel named Southern Cross. In his words, the boats were “as beautiful as their names,” yet their names are naturally separated by a hemisphere, united only by the sea. To me, the auroras are among the most astonishing natural phenomena one can witness.

It took me nine months to create this photo of the Southern Cross, and I couldn’t have done it better. When I saw it, high in the sky with the Southern Lights in the background and the full moon illuminating the desert-like landscape—resembling the sea—in New Zealand, I thought of Slocum, his admiration for the Souther Cross, and the Northern Lights vessel. Alone, just as he was on his greatest adventure, I knew this would be my photo of the month. Once again, I present a photo that doesn’t capture the beauty or light of the amazing place I was in, nor does it tell a story. But it’s about my personal journey behind it and my feelings during that fleeting moment of a long voyage.