Tonight is the last Supermoon for 2019 so if you get a chance, go outside and have a look. But if you miss it, don’t worry, it’ll be back next year.
Unfortunately we will miss the Lunar Eclipse this Monday night/Tuesday morning and the programme for the next couple of years for eclipses is very light for this part of the world.
This podcast has been recorded by us here from New Zealand for Space Place at Carter Observatory and the Jodcast, for the December night sky
Mars is getting closer this year and will at it’s closest by the end of July. But don’t worry it’ll still be about 58 million kilometres away.
Next week, Mars and Jupiter are better positioned in the early morning, before dawn, to get some good views and it might be the last chance to see Mercury for a while. With the moon taking a break the opportunity exists for some great views of some of the more fainter objects.
I’ve been arguing that the Zodiacal Band is humankind’s first useful calendar. Like any calendar, it predicts the future. So for instance, when the Sun is in Sagittarius we cannot see Sagittarius.
The stars in December as seen from Wellington New Zealand, an astrophotographer’s point of view.
As the waka entered the sky, Tama Rereti began to scatter the luminescent stones and pebbles in all directions as he went along. The wake of the canoe became the Milky Way and the stones and pebbles became its stars.
This is why we have stars in the sky.
Out I went and nothing prepared me for what I saw that night. On the pitch dark sky of Wairarapa, with luscious hills that hold the horizon in sweet curves that rest the eye, a luminous whirlpool of stars was erupting from the east. Silver river of stars, one of its arms was meandering the eastern horizon in oval arched loops like an octopus’s arm that passed a Southern Cross marking the 12 o’clock position on the celestial time keeper of the south. The galactic arm was thinning down towards the western horizon and righteously so as the further we go from Scorpius and Sagittarius, we are actually looking towards the outskirts of our galaxy, where fewer stars venture. I stood there in silence watching the slow rising of the Galaxy and I realised that it was for the first time in my life when I was truly seeing it with my eyes.
In Maori, tahi, rua, toru means one, two, three. So Atu-tahi – One, Taku-rua – Two, Tau-toru – Three,
or you can count Sirius (1) / Canopus (2) / Alpha Centauri (3) / Arcturus (4) No matter what you prefer, these stars will be there in the evening of May.
I could never quite grasp November, never understood the point of it being there. Feeling too cold and too hot in the same time… my senses definitely refused to multitask. Then, eons later when I discovered Wellington with its famous five seasons in one day: spring, summer, autumn, winter and Monsoon, November felt less incomprehensible.
Just like “Open sesame”, “Open April” is a pleonasm but we might have forgotten it is because the word April was invented long ago and far, far away, all the way to the other side of the world in Ancient Rome.
We often give the Moon magical properties it simply does not have. The amount of illumination it provides changes and that’s about it.
Happy Birthday Leaplings! As they are affectionately known, leaplings navigate a world where their official birthdays come only once every four years. Why did this happen and whose fault is it?
Images of objects in space are often coloured to help astronomers work out what’s going on. This post looks at what we can work out.
Milky-Way.Kiwi is a social enterprise for quality and affordable access to the night sky run by professional space science communicators. We provide educational services for teachers and schools – Spaceward Bound NZ, stargazing and astronomy and space courses and programmes for the public – Star Safari and we write about space and astronomy with a New Zealand perspective.
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