Kirsten Banks

Kirsten Alexandra Banks is an Indigenous Australian astrophysicist and science communicator of the Wiradjuri people, known for her work in promoting mainstream and Aboriginal astronomy.

[2] She received a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from University of New South Wales (UNSW) in 2018 and started working as an Astronomy Guide at the Sydney Observatory.

[3] While training at Sydney Observatory, Banks started to hear about Kamilaroi and Boorong astronomy, prompting her to learn more about her Indigenous Australian heritage.

Banks wrote that as there would have been no light pollution at the time of the carvings' creation, there would have been the ability to see six planets in the night sky with the naked eye – Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus.

[4] I was flabbergasted – this could be evidence of our people knowing that Earth is a planet along with the others in our night skies ... a millennia before the likes of Galileo, who discovered this a mere 400 years ago!For Banks's Honours project at UNSW, she is studying the evolution of galaxies and plans to continue on to do a PhD.