Eye of Jupiter: the BSG artifact, the Temple of Five and the supernova

The Eye of Jupiter is a marker on the road to Earth, left behind by the Thirteenth Tribe, that both the Colonial fleet and the Cylons went after on the algae planet about two years after the Fall. Everyone expected an artifact hidden in the Temple of Five. It wasn't an object at all. It was the planet's own star going supernova, seen through the temple, and the blast pointed the way onward. The story runs across two season 3 episodes, "The Eye of Jupiter" and "Rapture". (Battlestar Galactica, "The Eye of Jupiter"; Battlestar Galactica, "Rapture")

What is the Eye of Jupiter?#

The Eye of Jupiter is a dying star that the Thirteenth Tribe turned into a signpost. Thousands of years before the Fall, on their way from Kobol to Earth, they stopped on the algae planet and cut a temple into a mountain there. The temple was built so that when its star finally exploded, the light would shine through it and show the Eye. (Battlestar Galactica, "The Eye of Jupiter"; Battlestar Galactica, "Rapture")

Colonial scripture spoke of the Eye of Jupiter waiting in a Temple of Five, and Laura Roslin read it as a sign that would show the way to Earth. So both sides assumed the Eye was a thing you could pick up and carry off. The real answer came in "Rapture", when the star blew. The temple's central pillar held a swirling mandala, and the exploding star looked just like it. (Battlestar Galactica, "The Eye of Jupiter"; Battlestar Galactica, "Rapture")

The Temple of Five#

The Temple of Five sits inside a mountain on the algae planet. Tyrol knew its faith from his childhood, and told Cally how much his parents' devotion to it had annoyed him. Carbon dating by Tyrol's party put it at about 4,000 years old, which he tied to the Thirteenth Tribe leaving Kobol. (Battlestar Galactica, "The Eye of Jupiter")

Tyrol found it while the fleet was working the algae harvest. His link to it makes more sense later, once Tyrol learns he's one of the Final Five, the five Cylons the temple was really about. (Battlestar Galactica, "The Eye of Jupiter"; Battlestar Galactica, "Crossroads, Part II")

For the Cylons, the temple mattered for a different reason. D'Anna, the Number Three who'd been killing herself again and again to glimpse the Final Five in the gap between death and resurrection, believed the temple would show her their faces. (Battlestar Galactica, "The Eye of Jupiter"; Battlestar Galactica, "Rapture")

"The Eye of Jupiter": the standoff (season 3 episode 11)#

The fleet reached the algae planet desperate for food, after a dangerous run through a radiation-soaked star cluster in "The Passage". Crews set up camp and started harvesting. Then Tyrol found the temple. (Battlestar Galactica, "The Passage"; Battlestar Galactica, "The Eye of Jupiter")

Four basestars jumped in before anyone could search it properly. A Cylon delegation, with Baltar among them, came aboard Galactica under guard and set out their terms: the fleet should leave quietly so the Cylons could collect the Eye, and Cavil added Baltar's surrender to the deal. William Adama refused. He warned that if the Cylons tried to land, he would lay waste to the whole continent with nukes rather than let them have it. (Battlestar Galactica, "The Eye of Jupiter")

While the two sides stared each other down, the personal stories piled up. Sharon Agathon learned that her daughter Hera, whom she'd been told was dead, was alive on a basestar. Lee Adama, Kara Thrace and their spouses were caught in a messy affair. D'Anna secretly sent a Heavy Raider down to the surface while communications were jammed. When six Heavy Raiders headed for the planet, Adama had nuclear missiles armed and targeted on the temple, and Starbuck's Raptor was shot down on the surface. (Battlestar Galactica, "The Eye of Jupiter")

"Rapture": the supernova (season 3 episode 12)#

Adama held the nuke. The Cylons recalled all but one Heavy Raider and he stood down, but the Cylon consensus was splitting because D'Anna had gone her own way. (Battlestar Galactica, "Rapture")

To reach Hera, Athena asked Karl Agathon to shoot her, so she'd wake up in a new body among the Cylons. He did it. Once there, Caprica-Six helped her find Hera, who was gravely ill. When Sharon Valerii threatened the child, Caprica-Six killed her, and Athena got Hera back to Galactica. (Battlestar Galactica, "Rapture")

On the planet, Tyrol had wired the temple with explosives, but he couldn't bring himself to blow it up. When Lee took the detonator and tried, nothing happened: D'Anna, Baltar and a Cavil had already got inside and pulled the detonator caps. The star went nova, light poured into the temple and lit up the mandala, and D'Anna saw five robed figures and recognised them. She said she was sorry, that she'd had no idea. When a Cavil tried to stop her, Baltar shot him. D'Anna collapsed in Baltar's arms, told him "You were right" and died. (Battlestar Galactica, "Rapture")

Tyrol found Baltar in the temple and pistol-whipped him unconscious. Baltar came back to Galactica in a body bag, alive, and his road to trial started there. (Battlestar Galactica, "Rapture")

What the Eye of Jupiter revealed#

Once the nova had burned out, Felix Gaeta studied it and worked out what it meant. The Eye was a pointer. It aimed at the remains of another supernova about 13,000 light years away, in the Ionian Nebula. The fleet now had a heading. (Battlestar Galactica, "Rapture")

The Cylons lost something too. For chasing the Final Five against their own taboo, Cavil had the entire Number Three line boxed, its memories stored away and its copies taken out of service. What D'Anna saw died with her, for now. (Battlestar Galactica, "Rapture")

Kara Thrace had her own shock. Helo, looking at a picture of the temple's mandala, remembered something and found it in her old photos: a near-identical symbol she'd painted on the wall of her apartment on Caprica, long before she'd heard of the algae planet. (Battlestar Galactica, "Rapture")

Where the Eye led#

The Eye's heading carried the fleet through the rest of season 3. Kara stayed haunted by the mandala, and in "Maelstrom" she saw it again in the storm clouds of a gas giant and flew into it. Her Viper broke up and she was believed dead. (Battlestar Galactica, "Maelstrom")

At the Ionian Nebula, the place the Eye had pointed to, four of the Final Five, Saul Tigh, Tyrol, Samuel Anders and Tory Foster, heard a song and realised they were Cylons. Kara came back alive in the same battle, saying she'd been to Earth. (Battlestar Galactica, "Crossroads, Part II")

Kara then claimed the course the fleet was following was wrong and that it was moving away from Earth. She pulled a gun on Roslin trying to make her turn back. (Battlestar Galactica, "Six of One")