Looking up to the sky on the dark moonless night is such happiness for a star observer like me. It brings me imagination as well as pleasure to observe around while finding certain stars’ location, watching them move from east to west. Up there, I see a lion, bears, and a crocodile. And what about you? What do you see up there?

2. Ursa Major, or Crocodile Stars for Thai, is usually used as a guideline for it is rather high in distance from the skyline and is easy to spot. Row of two first stars points to the North Star, which is at 25 degree below or 5 times of the interval between the first two stars. Ursa Major is a very common constellation for many new star observers as it is obviously visible. The names are changed according to the imagination of each culture. Thai calls it Crocodile. Laos calls Elephant’s Head while people in the UK call it Plough. Chinese and North American see it as a Big Dipper. I had seen it a few times in Maejam district, Chiang Mai and a Pakeryaw hill tribe there call it ‘sha ka sher’ which means an elephant’s head, just like the Laos. Well, I would say I agree with them as it looks more like an elephant’s head than a crocodile. And when it moves around the North Pole, that elephant can also raise its trunk.

In academic terms, a star is merely a lump of mass and energy. However I still find pleasure and imagination every time I see them. Whenever I see a shooting star, I would pray for good things even though I know it is actually just an object falling from the sky into the atmosphere being burnt by friction. For me, meteor or shooting star is always a miracle. And I would not support anyone to let academic knowledge ruin our imagination, for they should be spent together harmoniously in the right place and at the right time. As a matter of fact, imagination does matter, not even less than knowledge at all.