This short video shows how to find the galaxy, Centaurus A, which is also known as NGC 5128. This galaxy is very bright and should be easy to spot.
A Kiwi perspective on astronomy and space science news and how to get the most out the night sky
Tag: southern hemisphere
The sky of February – only the brightest!
Getting to know the southern sky is for ever a wonderfully strange experience. In any new place that I visit I always feel grateful for landmarks. On Earth, I am looking for trees and buildings and mountains, in the sky I always look for the brightest stars. Here in New Zealand, there are places and times when the light of the individual stars is lost in the haze of the Milky Way as if a blanket of tiny lights is covering the Earth at night.
How to find 47 Tucanae
We’ve been really enjoying observing 47 Tucanae lately, so here’s a short video to help you find this wonderful globular cluster.
The sky of January – Io
Another year is upon us and January offers a great opportunity to get out and observe the night sky after making the best of those long summer evenings.
The sky of March – The Shining Ones
At the fringe of our milky city of stars, on the north-western horizon, the Pleiades, the Shining Ones (Te Tawhiti) are preparing for the journey to the underworld. They are to disappear shortly behind the Sun and will stay there for a while.
And the explanation goes that since people of old did not really have an explanation about space, in trying to figure out where exactly the Pleiades went, they invented a underworld. This is probably one of the reasons why this group of stars is so linked to stories of death, rebirth, and ancestors, and used to mark the beginning of the year in some cultures.
