Celestial Alignments and Solitary Statue

Lake Ballard (Western Australia) is home to Antony Gormley’s “Inside Australia” art project in which 50 metal statues stretch across the vast landscape. This image shows one of the metal statues, near “Pyramid Hill”, as morning twilight brightens along the eastern horizon. Above Pyramid Hill is the crescent moon, two planets (Venus and Jupiter), and constellations including Taurus and Orion. The Pleiades (Seven Sisters) appear above the statue. Click on the second photo to see this scene a day earlier on 2012 July 15 when the Moon was in a close conjunction with Jupiter.

Ancient Aboriginal stories relate how the Seven Sisters came to earth at Lake Ballard, and are now associated with landscape features such as Pyramid Hill.