Fear of Stars and Celestial Space
Astrophobia
Astrophobia is a fear of the stars, of outer space and of the night sky, and a religious movement founded in the 2010s has separately defined the same word as prejudice against its own adherents. Both definitions are in print and neither acknowledges the other.
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Which word means the fear of thunder
Astrophobia and astraphobia differ by a single vowel and mean unrelated things. Astraphobia is the fear of thunder and lightning, which has a literature, a forecast and a large population. Astrophobia is the fear of the stars and of outer space, sometimes extended to a fear of extraterrestrial threat, and it has none of those.
Wiktionary's page for astrophobia opens by directing the reader to astraphobia, which is the sensible response to the commonest way anybody arrives at the word. A third name, siderophobia, is used for the fear of stars specifically, from the Latin rather than the Greek.
Why the object is agreeable to others
A counsellor's overview of the term makes the point that separates this from the animal phobias. For most people, looking up at the night sky is calming, and produces awe, beauty and wonder. The same view produces panic, palpitations and dizziness in somebody with astrophobia.
That is unusually clean as a demonstration of what a phobia is. Nobody is neutral about a wasp and almost everybody is positive about a starry sky, so a fear of it cannot be explained by anything in the object. Whatever is happening is happening in the person looking, which is where apeirophobia locates it too.
The description given for it runs to the stars, outer space and the night sky, with aliens attached as an occasional extension, and the sources treat it as a specific phobia.
How a new religion claimed the word
The Astronist Institution maintains a dictionary called the Astronary, and on 2 August 2020 it published an entry for astrophobia with a definition that has nothing to do with stars: dislike of or prejudice against Astronism or Astronists, anti-Astronist sentiment, especially when espoused by a government, an organisation or another group. It supplies the derivatives astrophobe and astrophobic, and derives the prefix not from the Greek for star but from what it calls Astro-English, denoting the Astronist community.
The entry carries a copyright notice stating that the definitions are protected and should not be used elsewhere except in direct quotation with a reference back.
The catalogue records this because of what it shows about the construction. A movement founded recently reached for the -phobia suffix to name hostility to itself before that hostility had been documented, using a word already occupied by an unrelated fear, and asserted ownership of the definition. Every element of how this vocabulary grows is in that one entry.
What is documented
Little. Wiktionary's only citation for astrophobia in the star sense is a 2018 report on a horror anthology, which lists it among fourteen phobias given a segment each, alongside fears of:
Told apart
Often confused with Fear of Stars and Celestial Space
- Fear of Thunder and LightningAstraphobia differs by one vowel and means something else entirely. Wiktionary's page for this word opens by pointing the reader at that one, which is the commonest way anybody gets here.
- Fear of the DarkThe night sky arrives with the night, and the sources do not separate a fear of what is overhead from a fear of the conditions under which it is visible.
- Fear of InfinityApeirophobia is the closest documented neighbour: a fear produced by contemplating something unbounded rather than by seeing an object, which is what a sky full of stars presents.
Common questions
Questions about Astrophobia
- Is it the same as astraphobia?
- No, and the difference is one vowel. Astraphobia is the fear of thunder and lightning, from astrape, a flash. Astrophobia is the fear of the stars and of space, from astron. Wiktionary's page for the second opens by directing readers to the first, which records how often the two are confused.
- Why does the object matter here?
- Because almost everybody else likes it. A night sky produces awe and calm in most people, so a fear of it cannot be explained by anything the object is doing. That makes astrophobia a clearer demonstration of what a specific phobia is than a fear of something genuinely unpleasant.
- What is the Astronist definition?
- Prejudice against Astronism. The Astronist Institution published an entry on 2 August 2020 defining astrophobia as dislike of or prejudice against Astronism or Astronists, especially when espoused by a government or an organisation, derived its prefix from the name of the movement rather than from the Greek for star, and attached a copyright notice to the definition.
- Has anybody studied it?
- No. Wiktionary's only citation is a 2018 report on a horror anthology that gave it one of fourteen segments. There is no case report, no prevalence figure and no diagnostic listing under either meaning of the word.
Added 2026-08-24 · Revised 2026-08-26
Nearby in the catalogue
Related entries
- Fear of Thunder and LightningIts defining behaviour is surveillance, not avoidance: weather networks, storm tracking, no leaving the house before checking. Westefeld named the pattern in 1996.
- Fear of the DarkThe object of this fear cannot be produced, which is why reassurance fails. Two real prevalence figures exist for it and they are constantly quoted as one.
- Fear of InfinityNo object can be brought into the room. What produces the panic is an intrusive thought, and one neuroscientist thinks the real subject is the future.
- Fear of DepthsA swimmer who can see the bottom may be fine and the same person may not be, ten metres further out. What is feared is unmeasured extent rather than depth.
- Fear of Environmental CatastropheCoined in a 1988 newspaper column to name fear of an inhospitable planet, it now names the indifference toward nature that is making it that way.
- Fear of FallingThe fear of falling is measurable in infants who have never fallen, and a Dunedin cohort found it least common in the people who had been hurt.