Under the Southern Cross I stand

Apparently, it's the Australian cricket team's victory song ("with a sprig of wattle in my hand" etc). But that's not the Southern Cross' fault.

Here it is, complete with Pointers, power pylon, and a hint of Milky Way, taken from Sydney's northern suburbs, and suffering inevitably from a fair bit of light pollution. Compare the Milky Way's visibility with that from a few weeks ago out in the bush, here: http://sydneysapiential.blogspot.com.au/2017/04/kanangra-skies.html 

Kanangra skies

I spent the Easter long weekend in the Kanangra-Boyd National Park, doing an unexpectedly gruelling (but ultimately satisfying) 3-day bushwalk. More on that in subsequent posts, but here are some night sky shots from the Boyd River camping area.

We amazingly had an Easter of excellent weather, both bushwalking-wise, and astronomy-wise. And with reports of a possible nuclear winter to come, it was very much time to put my wide
angle lens to good use on the clear dark sky.

An exposure of a few seconds (first picture) yields the brighter stars (Southern Cross, Pointers etc) plus a hint of Milky Way. Click on the picture to see it a bit better.

Give it a full minute, and enhance it a little, and we get a very bright Milky Way indeed, though you have to work a little to distinguish that Cross. You see the Coalsack dark nebula well. It's otherwise known as the head of the Emu constellation - the enormous dark-patch constellation of indigenous astronomy. More of that in a few weeks time hopefully, when it's fully visible, nuclear winters permitting.







Here are my fellow campers, enjoying a nice warm campfire.