Stars is a wood engraving print created by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher in 1948, depicting two chameleons in a polyhedral cage floating through space. The compound of three octahedra used for the central cage in Stars had been studied before in mathematics, and Escher likely learned of it from the book Vielecke und Vielflache by Max Brückner. Escher used similar compound polyhedral forms in several other works, including Crystal (1947), Study for Stars (1948), Double Planetoid (1949), and Waterfall (1961). The design for Stars was likely influenced by Escher's own interest in both geometry and astronomy, by a long history of using geometric forms to model the heavens, and by a drawing style used by Leonardo da Vinci. Commentators have interpreted the cage's compound shape as a reference to double and triple stars in astronomy, or to twinned crystals in crystallography. The image contrasts the celestial order of its polyhedral shapes with the more chaotic forms of biology. Prints of Stars belong to the permanent collections of major museums including the Rijksmuseum, the National Gallery of Art, and the National Gallery of Canada. Description Stars is a wood engraving print; that is, it was produced by carving the artwork into the end grain of a block of wood (unlike a woodcut which uses the side grain), and then using this block to print the image. It was created by Escher in October 1948. Although most published copies of Stars are monochromatic, with white artwork against a black background, the copy in the National Gallery of Canada is tinted in different shades of turquoise, yellow, green, and pale pink. The print depicts a hollowed-out compound of three octahedra, a polyhedral compound composed of three interlocking regular octahedra, floating in space. Numerous other polyhedra and polyhedral compounds float in the background; the four largest are, on the upper left, the compound of cube and octahedron; on the upper right, the stella octangula; on the lower left, a compound of two cubes; and on the lower right, a solid version of the same octahedron 3-compound. The smaller polyhedra visible within the print also include all of the five Platonic solids and the rhombic dodecahedron. In order to depict polyhedra accurately, Escher made models of them from cardboard. Two chameleons are contained within the cage-like shape of the central compound; Escher writes that they were chosen as its inhabitants "because they are