David Bowie: Astronomers name lightning bolt constellation after space-obsessed singer

The constellation is ‘somewhere in the vicinity of Mars’, according to the astronomers

Monday 18 January 2016 14:08

A grab from the Stardust for Bowie site, which shows the constellation as seen from the Earth and allows people to pay tribute to the artist

(http://stardustforbowie.be/)

David Bowie has a constellation named after him, a set of stars in the shape of the iconic lightning bolt.

Belgian astronomers have registered the collection of seven stars, which can seen “in the vicinity of Mars”, in memory of the singer who died last week.

The lightning bolt first appeared painted onto Bowie’s face on the cover of the Aladdin Sane album. Now the astronomers have registered a set of stars in the same shape in tribute.

As well as the now-famous lightning bolt image, the stars and planets outside of Earth served as inspiration to Bowie throughout his career. From his very first single, Space Oddity, he was preoccupied with space travel — an image that continued through to one of his very last videos, Blackstar.

The constellation has been registered by the Belgian MIRA Observatory, which said it had worked to pick the right stars.

“It was not easy to determine the appropriate stars. Studio Brussels asked us to give Bowie a unique place in the galaxy,” Philippe Mollet from the MIRA Observatory, which named the stars, said in a statement.

“Referring to his various albums, we chose seven stars — Sigma Librae, Spica, Alpha Virginis, Zeta Centauri, SAA 204 132, and the Beta Sigma Octantis Trianguli Australis — in the vicinity of Mars. The constellation is a copy of the iconic Bowie lightning and was recorded at the exact time of his death.”

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

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1/30Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

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The spectacular cosmic pairing of the star Hen 2-427 — more commonly known as WR 124 — and the nebula M1-67 which surrounds it

ESA/Hubble & NASA

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A false colour image of Cassiopeia A comprised with data from the Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes and the Chandra X-Ray observatory

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NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman shared this image of Yellowstone via his twitter account

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An X1.6 class solar flare flashes in the middle of the sun in this image taken 10 September, captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory

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An image of the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy seen in infrared light by the Herschel Space Observatory. Regions of space such as this are where new stars are born from a mixture of elements and cosmic dust

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Nasa's Mars Rover Spirit took the first picture from Spirit since problems with communications began a week earlier. The image shows the robotic arm extended to the rock called Adirondack

Nasa

Nasa astronaut Scott Kelly captured this photograph of the green lights of the aurora from the International Space Station

Nasa/Scott Kelly

The Space Shuttle Challenger launches from Florida at dawn. On this mission, Kathryn Sullivan became the first U.S. woman to perform a spacewalk and Marc Garneau became the first Canadian in space. The crew of seven was the largest to fly on a spacecraft at that time, and STS-41G was the first flight to include two female astronauts

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The arrangement of the spiral arms in the galaxy Messier 63, seen here in an image from the Nasa Hubble Space Telescope, recall the pattern at the center of a sunflower

ESA/Hubble & NASA

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This Nasa Hubble Space Telescope image presents the Arches Cluster, the densest known star cluster in the Milky Way

NASA & ESA

Nasa astronaut Reid Wiseman tweeted this photo from the International Space Station on 2 September 2014

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A sokol suit helmet can be seen against the window of the Soyuz TMA-11M capsule shortly after the spacecraft landed with Expedition 39 Commander Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Soyuz Commander Mikhail Tyurin of Roscosmos, and Flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio of NASA near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan

(NASA/Bill Ingalls)

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The new constellation is being commemorated in an accompanying website, Stardust For Bowie. That site shows the stars that make up the constellation — and allows people to place their favourite songs within the shape, adding up to a collection of stardust where each speck is a person’s choice.

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