Some Flag Stars
Published on Dec 2, 2006 at 4:31 pm.
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People often come to my web page through a search engine looking for something. Most of the time, it is something astronomy or space exploration related, of course. But, once in a while their search has nothing at all to do with astronomy. One search that seems to come up again and again is a search for the meaning behind the stars on the Chinese flag. Of course, until now, I have not explicity had anything about the Chinese flag on my page, other than perhaps a widget for translating into Chinese. So, I thought that I’d oblige them and actually have a short posting about the meaning of the stars on the Chinese flag.
Now, I presume that what people are looking for is the meaning of the stars on communist China’s flag. That would be the flag of the People’s Republic of China. Actually, I didn’t know off the top of my head, so I had to look it up myself. Apparently, there is no universal agreement from the sources that I read as to the intent of the design. However, most sources say that the big star represents either communism itself or the communist Chinese government. The four smaller stars represent four classes of the people: the workers, the peasants, the petty bourgeoisie, and the patriotic captitalists. One source that I read suggests an alternate interpretation that the four smaller stars stood for the four classes of people in society: the worker, the farmer, the student, and the soldier.
I was going to go on and talk about stars on all sorts of other flags, but when I got to looking, I realized for the first time how many different nations use stars on their flags. Most of the stars symbolize some particular thing, such as the stars in the United States flag (my favorite!) seen at the top of this post. Here each of the 50 stars represents one of our 50 states. But I knew of several national flags that used an actual constellation on their flags. Now, the interesting thing is that it was the same constellation on each of these flags. That constellation was Crux, the Southern Cross. It was know to the ancient Greeks. Today, it is a bit far south to be seen from Greece, but thousands of years ago it was a little farther north. The precession of the Earth’s axis in space has slowly changed the point in the sky where the North Pole is located, and that has changed the declination (the celestial latitude) of everything else. In those long ago days, these stars were not a separate constellation, but rather were part of Centaurus. It wasn’t until the 17th Century that they became their own constellation. Today, Crux has five easy to recognize stars. Four are quite bright and form a slightly lopsided cross, with a fifth, dimmer, star a little bit off to one side. This constellation plays a central part in the Australian flag, together with a seven pointed star with each point symbolizing the six original states of Australia along with a seventh point for the territories and any future states:
The New Zealand flag looks a lot like the Australian flag and always confuses me. I have to stop and think about which one is which. It also has the Southern Cross on it, but without the dimmer fifth star, and without the large seven pointed star:
Other nations using the Southern Cross include Papua New Guinea
and Samoa.
Brazil also uses Crux, the Southern Cross, in its flag. But Brazil’s flag includes other constellations as well, including Canis Major, Scorpius, Triangulum Australe, and Hydra, along with the stars Procyon, Canopus, Spica, and Sigma Octantis:
But, the Southern Cross appears on more than just national flags. It is a very recognizable constellation, so it shows up in a lot of different places. One interesting place that I knew of was on the insignia for the United States Marine Corp First Division (Semper Fi!). The USMC 1st division saw service in Quadalcanal, in the Pacific, during the first major US offensive of World War II, where the Southern Cross could be seen.
-Astroprof
