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Look up.<\/strong> <\/p>\n Before you commute home to suburbs like Tarrytown and Larchmont, or race toward the next stop on your tourist map, take a minute. <\/p>\n Look up to see the stars. <\/p>\n One hundred and twenty-five feet above you are 2,500 stars and six signs of the zodiac along the ecliptic, a line that represents the path of the sun across the sky: <\/p>\n The signs are joined by a few others: Orion, Pegasus, Triangulum and, in the center of it all, Musca Borealis (the Northern fly, or sometimes called Apis, the bee). The Milky Way streaks across the ceiling in the opposite direction. The whole thing is ringed by intricate plaster moldings along the clerestory windows. Fifty-nine of the stars twinkle. <\/p>\n Who says there isn\u2019t magic in Midtown? <\/p>\n The original early 1900s plan for the ceiling was to build a massive skylight so commuters could look up at the actual stars: <\/p>\n But time and money were short, so the architects asked the artist Paul Helleu to design a version of the sky on the ceiling instead. Helleu took inspiration from star atlases from the 1600s. His main resource was the Uranometria from 1603, a lushly illustrated volume that was the first detailed cataloging of individual stars, their positions and brightness. See how similar the figures are. This is Aries: <\/p>\n Here\u2019s Taurus, the bull: <\/p>\n A heart balloon \u2014 one of several<\/a> \u2014 had floated up the day we took this photograph, nestling between Orion\u2019s club and Taurus\u2019s horn (maybe an earthly sign that this heavenly hunt might finally resolve). <\/p>\n Converting the flat drawings of a spherical sky re-projected onto a semi-cylindrical vaulted ceiling would have been no easy task. The design work was done by a famous scenic designer and muralist, James Monroe Hewlett, and was overseen by the Columbia astronomy professor Harold Jacoby, who in 1910 assured a panicked public<\/a> that Halley\u2019s comet would not hit Earth. <\/p>\n Dozens of painters got to work. The terminal opened at midnight on Feb. 2, 1913. The New York Central Railroad boasted \u201cthat many school children will go to the Grand Central Terminal to study this representation of the heavens.\u201d <\/p>\n Two weeks later, a commuter from New Rochelle (and a hobby astronomer) looked up at the ceiling and realized that west was east and east was west and the sky was not, actually, in a proper arrangement. Only Orion was shown in the \u201ccorrect\u201d orientation. He wrote a \u201cwrathful\u201d letter to the station. As The New York Times reported in 1913, officials at Grand Central \u201cdid not deny the charge that things were a bit mixed, but held that it was a pretty good ceiling for all that.\u201d <\/p>\n How this happened is still a matter of debate, given Professor Jacoby\u2019s astronomical blessing. <\/p>\n Michael Allison, a former NASA planetary scientist at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (and a former adjunct in the Columbia astronomy and astrophysics department), met me last month at the great clock under the ceiling to explain his theory. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve stared at the ceiling I don\u2019t know how many hours,\u201d he said. \u201cI keep hoping I can discover one more thing.\u201d <\/p>\n The liberties taken, Mr. Allison said, like re-sizing the constellations to fit the space and flipping Orion (in relation to the rest), were carefully done. Ultimately, a good marriage of art and science. He thinks Jacoby was a victim of big project bureaucracy, that it was all a mixup. <\/p>\n Jacoby probably expected the design he approved to be projected overhead, where the result would match the plans if you held them above you. The painters put them on the floor instead. Hence, the flip. <\/p>\n But this \u201cheavenly view\u201d \u2014 the stars as if they could be seen from above, looking down \u2014 may not be a bad view at all. <\/p>\n \u201cThere are just so many bad things happening in the world now that I think the sky offers a perspective that can lift us above that,\u201d Mr. Allison said. <\/p>\n For Deirdre Newman, the great-granddaughter of the muralist Hewlett, who painted the ceiling, the imperfection \u201cis what art is.\u201d <\/p>\n Ms. Newman, it turns out, is also a painter of murals and ceilings. But these days, if she has to flip an image, she just hits a button on the projector. <\/p>\n \u201cAnytime I make a mistake painting, I\u2019m like, this proves that it\u2019s art,\u201d she said. \u201cIt is not perfection, and it shouldn\u2019t be \u2014 it would be a sad thing if it was.\u201d <\/p>\n The stories that we\u2019ve given to the stars over millenniums, some of the most retold tales in history, are hardly orderly \u2014 stories of fate, violence, betrayal, revenge, sex and punishment. Cancer helps Hera in pinching a rival\u2019s foot. Orion, son of Poseidon, is placed in the stars by Zeus, locked in an eternal hunt. The two fish of Pisces (Aphrodite and Eros) are linked together to escape the monster-of-all-monsters, Typhon. <\/p>\n Or the stories are totally different if you were Babylonian or Egyptian, Greek or Roman. Today, the stars mean something else again to a devoted user of the horoscope app Co-Star, seeking reassurance after a breakup. And to a commuter standing in Grand Central, looking up while waiting for the train, the stars might just be a momentary diversion, a decorative way to pass the time. Or more. <\/p>\n Take what you want. Take what you need. <\/p>\n *** <\/p>\n By the 1940s, the ceiling had fallen into disrepair, so they painted a whole new one on four-foot-by-eight-foot asbestos sheets over the old one. This is the version that exists today. Eventually that second ceiling, too, grew dark with grime and had to be cleaned from 1996 to 1998. The difference was stark. As you were zooming in, you may have noticed a little dark square by Cancer. They deliberately left one bit of the uncleaned ceiling here: <\/p>\n The best time to take all of it in \u2014 the ceiling, and the majesty of the station \u2014 might just be coming this weekend. The setting sun will line up with Manhattan\u2019s street grid and should (pending clouds) bathe the terminal in a beautiful golden glow Saturday at 8:19 p.m. and Sunday at 8:20 p.m. I plan to be on the east balcony looking west on Sunday for that moment. <\/p>\n See you there. <\/p>\n How we took the photograph<\/strong> <\/p>\n To generate a high-resolution panorama of the ceiling, The Times captured 232 close-up images. We then used software to stitch these photos into an equirectangular projection, to approximate the curve of the ceiling. We also developed custom computer vision software to ensure consistent color blending across varying lighting conditions. To optimize for display efficiency and clarity during navigation, the image was then re-projected into the shape of a cube. We think it\u2019s still a pretty good picture for all that. <\/p>\n This is an installment in our series of experiments<\/a> on art and attention. If you liked this one, you may like these past exercises: a finished, unfinished portrait<\/a>; a sudden rain over a bridge<\/a>; a unicorn tapestry<\/a>; some buckets from Home Depot<\/a>; and a Whistler painting<\/a>. <\/p>\n