Portents in the heavens

[I'm A Banana]

It's the god of the sky.

It's arms are spread out, with the material of the sky stretched between them like the skin between a bat's wing-bones. It makes the sky, and beyond the sky lies the VOID.

OR

It's a portal to Paradise. If you could fly through the heart of that spiral, you would find Heaven, and you'd be able to dine with angels.

I mean, if it's bigger than the moon, I figure we've got deities of celestial bodies that are smaller (the visible planets, in particular, often become deities)....

 

[palleomortis]

Or the god of the sky's belly button!!!!

 

[Desdichado]

Actually, I think the Magellanic Clouds(if you count them as seperate form the Milky Way) and the Andromeda Galaxy are the only galaxys seen by the naked eye. (I could be wrong so I'm not betting the farm on it)

Yep, you'd be wrong. With good viewing conditions, most folks can see M33 (the Triangulum galaxy) with the naked eye as well, and there are reports of exceptionally sharp-eyed folks spotting M81 (Bode's Galaxy) with the naked eye as well.

And I don't understand your comment at all. Of course you count the Magellanic Clouds as separate from the Milky Way. They are separate. That's a given. They're not even the closest galaxies to ours. The Canis Major Dwarf and SagDEG galaxies are closer than the LMC.

I would also agree that if you were just outside the galaxy looking in you probably wouldn't see the spirals like you think you would, and the galaxy wouldn't be any brighter than the milky way is now from our point of view, at least you are not going to see it during the day.

Yes, you could, possibly. Oh, sure, you wouldn't see the spiral during the day, but it's possible you'd see the nucleus, which is why I mentioned it.

Anyway, that was a throwaway comment; everybody's been very hung up on it. I haven't tried to calculate the apparent magnitude and really see if it would be visible during the day or not (that depends on how bright the sun is, and other objects in the sky too), I just mentioned it as a possibility.

I wouldn't let that stop you from putting whatever you thought was cool in your world though.

Thanks for your permission. Can anyone answer the question I asked, or am I going to have to continue to defend my statement from a scientific point of view over and over?

 

[Desdichado]

It's the god of the sky.

It's arms are spread out, with the material of the sky stretched between them like the skin between a bat's wing-bones. It makes the sky, and beyond the sky lies the VOID.

OR

It's a portal to Paradise. If you could fly through the heart of that spiral, you would find Heaven, and you'd be able to dine with angels.

I mean, if it's bigger than the moon, I figure we've got deities of celestial bodies that are smaller (the visible planets, in particular, often become deities)....

Hey, those are both cool! I might use both of them to some extent. My other thought is that the world is going through a big of an "Enlightenment" approach. Old beliefs and religions are being questioned by some, and new proposals are common. That doesn't mean the new proposals are any better, but that lets me potentially use both of those.

 

[Desdichado]

Have you ever read Nightfall, by Isaac Asimov? Good source material. Great SF.

I haven't read it, but I've heard of that one. I'm familiar with the concept behind it, anyway.

But as to myths? Good question. Perhaps they don't have much 'darkness', so the mythology pertains to different colors of light which take on the different light/dark and good/evil roles. Perhaps there is a strong polytheistic element pertaining to the cluster/galaxy.

Do they see it as a serpent coiled? Or as bread rolled up ready to bake? Could it represent a mysterious gate in the heavens? (The original inhabitants always intended to repair their ship and get back to the spiral.)

Or is getting closer? Are there fears of the world getting hotter and drier and nastier due to the Great Eye?

Great ideas, too. Thanks! I'm probably going to combine a lot of ideas, and different cultures will naturally have different beliefs, so the more the merrier!

 

[Desdichado]

For anyone interested, I posted this at rpg.net too. I seem to get very different responses to the same questions here and there. I did modify the language somewhat to try and presumptively fend off all of the "I don't think that's possible" responses.

Really, I did my homework. I've been an astronomy fan since I was old enough to read, and I still keep up. I think this is extremely likely as the view one would have assuming a planet in the LMC could support life. Harumph!