Watch the famous Perseid Meteor Shower online now live with Slooh. The famous shower is too low to observe properly from New Zealand and you’d have to wake up early in the morning for it.
This video shows the position of Matariki relative to the Sun in mid-July. The video shows the night sky in the east throughout the whole night finishing with the sunrise.
What’s in the night sky in July 2020. Listen to our podcast covering both hemispheres with Sam, Hari and Peter.
To find Matariki you have to get up before dawn and catch this beautiful cluster rising just before the Sun. The sky will be brighter because of the approaching dawn so Matariki can be tricky to spot if you don’t know where to look. This video shows you how to find Matariki.
Fly through of the Pleiades star cluster, known as Matariki in New Zealand in May/June. Made from ESA’s Gaia DR2 data.
Where exactly am I looking to find Matariki in the night sky?
Here’s a quick video to help you find Matariki. You’ll have to get up early in the morning to catch this fantastic cluster in the sky just before dawn.
The Pleiades are a fascinating star cluster that is easily spotted not far from the Hyades cluster in Taurus and is visible in the Southern Hemisphere summer, Northern Hemisphere winter.
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.
SpaceX is well advanced in it’s plans to build a huge rocket to take humans to Mars and they plan to do this by 2024. This article has a closer look at the Big Falcon Rocket to see what’s so special about it.
With all the talk of going back to the moon, we thought it’d be good to recap on who is doing what in the coming years about returning to the Moon.
Where are the satellites? We hear a lot about GPS, Hubble, the ISS and a load of other satellites, but not often where they are or much about how they got there, or how they stay there.
A great reason to look up at the night sky is that you might see a supernova like the the one that Albert Jones spotted in 1987.
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.
At Star Safari, everyone 15 and younger is FREE because we believe that young people should not pay for inspiration.
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