Welehu 2026 (Nowemapa 8 – Kēkēmapa 9, 2026)
Na Leilehua Yuen, Hawaiʻi Culture and Language Resident at Gemini & NOIRLab
Lonoikamakahiki! Hauʻoli Makahiki Hou! Happy New Year! We have come ‘round again through another year of Hawaiian Skies.
As a child, I always wondered how people decided where to start their calendars. Every culture has its own answer. Hawaiian people developed several answers. Each district had a calendar that suited the cycle of its own harvest or fishing cycle. The Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council begins their calendar in January with Kaulua. The Prince Kūhiō Civic Club calendar begins with Welehu, the month in which the Pleiades rises at sunset. We generally follow their calendar, which was inspired and created through the research of the late Aunty Bobbee Mills-Diaz and is edited, updated, and enhanced by Dr. Kalei Nuʻuhiwa. For a grid showing relationships between some of the Hawaiian months, take a look at the 2025 Makaliʻi column.
Click to view in detail - Credit: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/L. Yuen
As we now have completed a full cycle of the ulu hōkū and of the huihui, I thought this month we would focus on the stars themselves. Starting, as we do, with those which will set first in the 8pm chart, Nuʻu (Rasalhauge) is nearing the horizon as night falls on Hilo of Welehu. Nuʻu first came to my attention while I was studying the Maui starline as presented in the Kumulipo. It sits right about where I would expect the ʻanuʻu for which Maui strove in his sixth strife to be.
By now ʻAi Kanaka, the Great Shark in the Milky Way, is diving below the rim of the horizon. But his tail is still visible. Behind the dorsal fin of the tail are Keoea (Vega) with its four companions, ʻEhā-keoea (Lyra), and below the tail are the three stars of the Humu-mā: Humu, ʻAu-haele, and Pai-kauhale. With Deneb, they form the Summer Triangle or Navigator’s Triangle. While the individual stars have been used for navigation on land and sea by many cultures for thousands of years, it was not until the 20th Century, when aviators began to use it, that the “Navigator’s Triangle” became a formal part of the navigational lexicon.
Holo-puni (Kochab) is a 20th Century name chosen by the Polynesian Voyaging Society. When developing the wayfinding techniques for the South Pacific, which relied so much on the generous teachings of Micronesian Pwo Navigator Mau Pialug, they were able to work from the Micronesian names where the Hawaiian names were lost. But in the northern skies, where names were lost, they had to create their own. Holo - to travel, puni - to go around. And so Holopuni sails around the north celestial pole.
Click to view in detail (NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/L. Yuen)
Maka-holo-waʻa is a name that Kupahu listed in 1865. We are making an educated guess that it is Polaris. We know how important Polaris was throughout the era of Polynesian exploration of the North Pacific and through the more modern sailing era by the many names which have been recorded for it.
This month, we are treated to Koko-iki (Scheat) riding near zenith as the sky grows dark. As the tutelary star of Koko-iki, Kohala, it reminds us of the birth of Kamehameha Paiʻea. Here I am going to continue my campaign to disabuse people of the notion that his birth was heralded by Halley’s Comet. As the most authoritative early writer on Kamehameha, Samuel Kamakau, gives his birth date as 1736, the 1758 passage of Halley’s Comet does not fit. European visitors to the islands who mention Kamehameha in 1778 and later describe a mature warrior of reputation, not a youth of twenty. If there were literal comets associated with his birth, rather than allegories, I would posit:
Comet C/1737 C1: A bright comet tracked globally by astronomers in the spring of 1737.
Comet C/1739 K1 (Zanotti): A very bright, naked-eye comet visible in mid-1739 that crossed a massive expanse of the night sky.
In trying to do a deeper dive into Ahi-wela (Fomalhaut), I ran into a bunch of AI hallucinations, including misattributions of the work of Johnson, Mahelona, Ruggles, and myself. Looking it up in the newspapers took me to some lovely poetic allusions, but none had to do with Fomalhaut. So, at this point I am thinking it is probably a late 19th or a 20th Century name.
Mūlehu is a lovely traditional name which goes way back. One of the things I love about it is what it says about Hawaiian culture. Polo-ahi-lani is a blind chief. Polo-ʻula and Mūlehu are his attendants who lead him about. I love the caregiving that this moʻolelo uluhōkū preserves for us! And I am still tickled that the same navigational star, Mūlehu/γ Cassiopeiae/Tiansi/Navi, that our ancestors used is one of the stars that the Apollo program used as a navigational star. It just warms the cockles of my little heart.
On to Holoholo-pīnaʻau (Saturn): One of the meanings for “pinau” is to recoil, to snap back, like a rope, which describes the flight of a dragonfly. This may be a reference to the retrograde motion of the planet.
Now we look at Kaʻalolo, the name of which is shared by Hamal and Denebola. They bracket +20°. This can be handy, having one rising when one is setting, or one in front and one behind. As we look at the many star names, some patterns are appearing: Stars that “hand off” their position may share names. Stars that appear in the same area of the sky more than five hours apart may share names. Stars that look similar, or are in huihui that have similar configurations may share names.
Kanaloa (Mirfak), Kāne (Algol), and Māui (Atik) come to us from the story of Māui as told in the Kumulipo.
Kauʻōpua (Achernar) can be translated as “Set in the Horizon Clouds,” and at about –57°, it rests just at the usual top of the cloudbanks as they drift in from the horizon.
While many like to translate Hōkū-lei (Capella) as “Star Wreath,” I think another translation, “rising, as a cloud,” is more accurate, given the way it rises with a cloudy mass of the Milky Way behind it.
Next month, I will share an agricultural story of Aldebaran and the Pleiades. But right now, as the Ipu-nui-a-Laʻamaomao has set, marking the end of hurricane season, and the heavy winter storms have not quite set in, in hopes that the stars will look kindly on my boat as we take her to Honokōhau, let’s look at Makaliʻi in his canoe, with its great sail made from the head of Taurus, and Hina-ke-kā, the beautifully carved canoe bailer who turned into his wife.
At last, Elnath is rising. I am still seeking a name I like. Kau-lana-a-ka-lā, which is the name usually put forth, is associated with the setting sun at summer solstice. So, I really want to find another. I’ll keep looking!
Finding the Hawaiian names for stars is complicated by a number of factors, including vocabulary loss due to loss of cultural practices and changing educational practices, incompatibility between western knowledge coding and retention and traditional knowledge coding and retention.
Fortunately we had scholars from the 19th Century who foresaw these problems and left us all they could. In the 20th Century we had scholars such as Rubellite Johnson, John Mahelona, Clive Ruggles, and Bobbee Mills-Diaz who found their work, brought it back to light, and did further research. And we currently have scholars such as Kalei Nuʻuhiwa, Martha Noyes, Kaʻiu Kimura, Larry Kimura, and others, forming a continuum of study which incorporates traditional ways of seeing and innovative research models.
"I ka wā ma mua, i ka wā ma hope." In Hawaiian, the past is the time that has gone before us, and the future is the time coming after us. Astronomy is a beautiful example of that cosmic architecture. I look forward to sharing more in this new wā.
