For Indigenous Australians, the dark spaces between stars are as important as the stars themselves. The Emu in the Sky is formed not by stars, but by dark nebulae silhouetted against the Milky Way.
The Emu's head is the Coalsack Nebula, next to the Southern Cross. Its neck stretches through dark lanes to its body in Scorpius and Sagittarius.
When the Emu constellation appears near the horizon at sunset, it signals the time to harvest emu eggs -- practical astronomical knowledge passed down for over 65,000 years.