“One experiences an indescribable sensation when, as he approaches the equator, and especially in passing from the one hemisphere to the other, he sees the stars with which he has been familiar from infancy gradually approach the horizon, and finally disappear. Nothing impresses more vividly on the mind of the traveler the vast distance to which he has been removed from his native country than the sight of a new firmament. The grouping of the larger stars, the scattered nebulae rivalling in lustre the milky-way, and spaces remarkable for their extreme darkness, give the southern heavens a peculiar aspect. The sight even strikes the imagination of those who, although ignorant of astronomy, find pleasure in contemplating the celestial vault, as one admires a fine landscape or a majestic site…”
-Alexander von Humboldt, July 1799
Humboldt, the famous german explorer and naturalist, started to admire the wonders of a still fairly unknown New World even before arriving to dry land. For him, the new night sky would be just one of several things he was about to discover.
Reference:
– von Humboldt A & MacGillivray W. (1833). The Travels and Researches of Alexander Von Humboldt: Being a Condensed Narrative of His Journeys in the Equinoctial Regions of America, and in Asiatic Russia: Together with Analyses of His More Important Investigations. New York. Harper.
Ken S. Toyama 