Lestrange's eyes travelled from this mystery to the burning cross, and …"
To the naked eye it is as black and dismal as death, but the smallest telescope reveals it beautiful and populous with stars. So sharply defined is it, so suggestive of a void and bottomless cavern, that the contemplation of it afflicts the imaginative mind with vertigo. Īlso, Henry De Vere Stacpoole described the Coalsack in his novel The Blue Lagoon (1908), as Lestrange observes it from the deck of the Northumberland, "In the Milky Way, near the Southern Cross, occurs a terrible circular abyss, the Coal Sack. The Coalsack figures prominently in the Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's science fiction novel The Mote in God's Eye and its sequels, The Gripping Hand and Outies.
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In the Solar Queen series by Andre Norton, several characters swear ".by the Coalsack's Ripcord!" The Coalsack is mentioned in the Star Trek: The Original Series episodes " The Immunity Syndrome" and " Let That Be Your Last Battlefield", as well as 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. The dark Coalsack Nebula can be seen as an obscuring smudge across the Milky Way.
In Inca astronomy this nebula was called Yutu, meaning a partridge-like southern bird or Tinamou. As bora grounds are generally located on the compass points north–south, the southern coal sack indicates the initiation/ceremonial ring. These astronomical sites allowed the spirits to continue ceremony similar to their human counterparts on Earth. There is also a reference by Gaiarbau (1880) regarding the coalsacks replicating bora rings on Earth. Harney, this being is called Utdjungon and only adherence to the tribal law by surviving tribe members could prevent him from destroying the world with a fiery star. Amongst the Wardaman people, it is said to be the head and shoulders of a law-man watching the people to ensure they do not break traditional law.
The Coalsack in Australian Aboriginal astronomy forms the head of the emu in the sky in several Aboriginal cultures. The European constellation on the right is Crux, or the Southern Cross, and on the left is Scorpius. Ī depiction of the emu in the sky, which is an Australian Aboriginal constellation consisting of dark clouds rather than of stars. It dominates and overspills the southeast corner of what is considered the extent of the constellation Crux at a little less than twice the distance of Acrux, 180 parsecs (590 ly) away from Earth. The Coalsack Nebula ( Southern Coalsack, or simply the Coalsack) is the most prominent dark nebula in the skies, with a designation TGU H1867, first referred to in Cataloging 1850, being easily visible to the naked eye as a dark patch obscuring a brief section of Milky Way stars as they cross their southernmost region of the sky, east of Acrux (Alpha Crucis) which is the bright, southern pointer star of the southern cross. The Coalsack Nebula taken by the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope