Everything in the Universe is Moving–Including the Constellations

[MUSIC]

[Two people look through a telescope at dusk, pointing at the stars.]

JACKIE FAHERTY (Curator, Encounters in the Milky Way): As long as people have been looking up, they've noticed–

[A timelapse of the night sky and visible Milky Way over a mountainous landscape.]

FAHERTY: –patterns in the nighttime sky. Some people would see–

[The Big Dipper or Ursa Major constellation is highlighted in the sky over a tent, with the image of a bear drawn on behind it.]

FAHERTY: –a bear, some people might–

[The constellation Orion appears, highlighted in the sky.]

FAHERTY: –see a hunter. And you could come up with stories–

[Two people sit on top of a car talking, silhouetted by a fantastic orange sunset behind them.]

FAHERTY: –of what those shapes might mean.

[JACKIE FAHERTY appears on screen, speaking to the camera with an image of the Milky Way galaxy behind her.]

FAHERTY: But now, we know those stories take us far, far deeper into the scientific tales of where the universe came from.

[A visualization of the Northern Hemisphere constellations appears with the constellations rotating in the sky like the Sun.]

FAHERTY: The stars rise and set like the Sun, because the Earth is turning–

[A visualization of the Southern Hemisphere constellations appears with them rotating the opposite way in the sky.]

FAHERTY: –and the stars change with the seasons because the Earth is moving around the Sun.

[FAHERTY reappears on screen, speaking to the camera.]

FAHERTY: But if you wait long enough, much longer than the human lifetime, you would see that–

[An image of the night sky appears, with thousands of stars illuminated and the Big Dipper highlighted in the bottom right. All the stars begin to move in totally different directions and speeds. The Big Dipper constellation stretches and morphs unrecognizably.]

FAHERTY: –everything in the nighttime sky is going to change its position because everything is in motion.

[The American Museum of Natural History logo appears.]

[A bowling ball rolls down a lane in slow motion.]

FAHERTY: One of the basic understandings in physics is that–

[A child slides down an icy hill and continues to slide past the camera, GIGGLING and without slowing down.]

FAHERTY: –once you're set in motion, you stay in motion.

[FAHERTY reappears on screen speaking to the camera. Text appears: “Jackie Faherty, Curator, Encounters in the Milky Way]

FAHERTY: The Big Bang was a very dynamic process, and at the time of the Big Bang, everything was set into motion. Since that time, everything has been kept in motion. Every star in the nighttime sky that you see when you walk outside is moving.

[A visualization of all the stars in the nighttime sky, some visible to the human eye and many more not visible, moving quickly in different directions.]

FAHERTY: One particular–

[FAHERTY reappears on screen speaking to the camera.]

FAHERTY: –space-based observatory that has revolutionized our understanding–

[An illustration of the Gaia Space Telescope with the Milky Way band in the background. Text reads: “Gaia Space Mission, Launched 2013.”]

FAHERTY: –is called Gaia. Gaia's intention was to map the Milky Way and beyond.

[The camera flies through a rendering of the Gaia telescope, showing how light enters the telescope.]

FAHERTY: Over the course of my career in astrophysics, I've seen our understanding of the cosmos completely change–

[FAHERTY reappears on screen speaking to the camera.]

FAHERTY: when the Gaia space telescope revealed the nearly 2 billion star map.

[A visualization shows the Gaia telescope rapidly spinning and scanning the sky and revealing many more stars as it goes.]

FAHERTY: It was so critical because everything depends on these maps of objects to understand–

[FAHERTY reappears on screen speaking to the camera.]

FAHERTY: –the fundamentals of how stars work, of how planets work with the stars.

[A side-by-side graphic appears, with the constellation Taurus as it appears today on the left, and the constellation speeding forward 4 million years and morphing and stretching into a different shape on the right.]

FAHERTY: So now with this information we can see for almost 2 billion stars where they are and where they're going.

[A side-by-side graphic appears, with the constellation Leo as it appears today on the left, and the constellation speeding forward 4 million years and morphing and stretching into a different shape on the right.]

FAHERTY: We can move 4 million years into the future and see constellations like Leo the lion, or Taurus the Bull–

[A side-by-side graphic appears, with the constellation Scorpius as it appears today on the left, and the constellation speeding forward 4 million years and morphing and stretching into a different shape on the right.]

FAHERTY: –or Scorpius the scorpion, changing over time, morphing in their structures into something different.

[FAHERTY reappears on screen speaking to the camera.]

FAHERTY: The sun is also in motion. It's orbiting the center of the galaxy.

[The camera moves away from a visualization of the Sun, rapidly so that an illustration of the Milky Way galaxy fills the screen. A yellow line shows a mostly consistent orbit by the Sun around the Milky Way.]

FAHERTY: It takes roughly 225 million years for the Sun to make its lap around the Milky Way. And it's about 20 times since the Sun was born–

[FAHERTY reappears on screen speaking to the camera.]

FAHERTY: –that we've made laps around. So the solar system itself is roughly 20 galactic years old.

[The Sun flies through a field of stars, highlighted by a pulsing ring of light.]

FAHERTY: As the Sun makes its travels around the galaxy,

[The pulsing ring is seen but further away, with more stars filling the screen. Some of the stars are highlighted in clusters with different color markings.]

FAHERTY: –the neighborhood changes, your neighbors change.

[A visualization shows the Sun in the center, with hundreds of stars moving around it in every direction.]

FAHERTY: All of the stars are on different paths as they move around the galaxy. Wait 100 million years, and you're going to be–

[A visualization of flying through the disc of the Milky Way galaxy, surrounded by red dust and stars.]

FAHERTY: –roughly on the other side of the galaxy, completely different neighborhood.

[FAHERTY reappears on screen speaking to the camera.]

FAHERTY: For the length of human civilization's existence, we haven't moved all that much in our path around the galaxy. But when humans were first starting to walk upright, we did enter a very strange area of the galaxy–

[A visualization of supernova explosions, with our Sun, highlighted by a ring of light, flying into the explosions.]

FAHERTY: –an area that was ignited by several supernova, giant explosions. Now that led to us having–

[A timelapse of the night sky over mountains on Earth shows the band of the Milky Way in the sky.]

FAHERTY: –a gorgeous view of the nighttime sky as the area that we're currently in,

[A visualization of a wispy white bubble surrounding clusters of stars sits among the red dust and more stars of the Milky Way. A text line points to a pulsing circle of light in the center: “we are here.”]

FAHERTY: –in the galactic neighborhood, is relatively clear of gas and dust, because these supernovas swept out the area.

[FAHERTY reappears on screen speaking to the camera.]

FAHERTY: Now, we won't be in here forever. We will exit this thing that we call the local bubble in a couple million years. And when we do, our view of the nighttime sky will probably change.

[In a visualization of the night sky, stars begin to fade and disappear from view until the sky is mostly dark.]

FAHERTY: You won't have as good of a view of all of the stars. It might look a little bit murkier. We won't have as crisp, clear view out into the cosmos.

[FAHERTY reappears on screen speaking to the camera.]

FAHERTY: In some ways, being inside of the bubble as humans were developing technology that would allow us to study the universe is a wonderful coincidence of motion and how life has evolved.

[A visualization shows the night sky, with sections of it slowly revealing more and more stars.]

FAHERTY: Mapping the positions of stars and even the Sun’s place among the stars isn’t necessarily new with today’s technology–we’re just way better at it right now.

[A star map from the past with all the constellations hand illustrated appears.]

FAHERTY: But you could actually go back and look at even–

[An ancient Greek illustration of the constellation Orion fades to reveal the constellation Orion in the night sky today.]

FAHERTY: –ancient drawings, compare them to today’s catalogues and detect–

[An ancient Chinese illustration of the Big Dipper constellation fades to reveal the same constellation in today’s night sky.]

FAHERTY: –some of that same stellar motion that we’re so excited to see in today’s–

[Stars move quickly in different directions in the night sky, based on Gaia’s calculations.]

FAHERTY: –modern astrophysics catalogues. Astrophysics today has us pretty well mapped for–

[The band of the Milky Way galaxy is seen–a real “photograph” from the Gaia telescope.]

FAHERTY: –a specific kind of star, for a brightness of a star,

[FAHERTY reappears on screen speaking to the camera.]

FAHERTY: –but you never know what you're going to get. Because we are on a journey.

[The solar system is seen, but appears to be flying through space in this visualization, with trails showing where the planets and the Sun have been.]

FAHERTY: The entire solar system is on this traveling ship which is moving around the Milky Way.

[A visualization of the solar system shows objects flying into and out of it.]

FAHERTY: –We'll move through different areas, we’ll encounter different kinds of objects.

[FAHERTY reappears on screen speaking to the camera.]

FAHERTY: We will get closer and farther from things that the nighttime sky has brought us to understand,

[The night sky with the lines of different constellations highlighted.]

FAHERTY: and the journey will hopefully help us understand better our place in the universe.

[Credits roll.

Encounters in the Milky Way was developed with the major support and partnership of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

With deep gratitude to Van Cleef & Arpels

Generously sponsored by Robert and Kristin Peck

Producer

Lee Bucknell

OpenSpace Visualizations

Deion Desir

Images / Archive

iStock / bjdlzx, Elena Kurkutova, itsskin, m-gucci, Nazarii Neshcherenskyi, selected-takes, sinceLF

Wikimedia Commons / European Space Agency, E. Slawik/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M. Zamani

Music

“Ask More Questions” by Ben Howells (PRS) / Warner/Chappell Production Music

“Nova” by Ben Stone (PRS) / Warner/Chappell Production Music

“Changing World” by Peter John Nickalls (PRS) / Warner/Chappell Production Music

Sound Effects

FreeSound / DARTEKZ_GAMEZ, morgantj, Zappa_Was_God

© American Museum of Natural History]