It might be chilly, but Australia’s night sky puts on a dazzling show at this time of year – and this weekend is particularly good if you have clear weather. Rug up and use our guide to see if you can spot some of our winter wonders.
While it might be tempting to stay home and rug up, winter is the best time of year to go out and see the night sky .an amazing view of our sparkling sky.The darker the sky, the better — and this weekend should be particularly good as there's a new moon on Sunday, August 4, so there won't be any moonlight to disrupt your view on that night.
Some features in our winter sky are only visible from the Southern Hemisphere, so Australia gets a front-row seat to the action.At this time of the year, in the early evenings, the Southern Cross lies on its side, close to the southern horizon.If you're in a dark sky area, look carefully at the area near the brightest star in the crossbar of Crux with binoculars or a small telescope. You'll see a pretty cluster of red and blue stars known as the Jewel Box.
These constellations are home to beautiful gas clouds, such as Rho Ophichi and the Eagle Nebula , which are favourites of astrophotographers." a great time to look at the stars, because you're always going to see something," Kirsten Banks, an astrophysicist, science communicator and keen stargazer, says.If you look carefully at the Milky Way from an area with no light pollution, you'll see the famous Indigenous constellation called the Emu in the Sky.
As Earth moves around the Sun throughout the year, our view of our home galaxy, the Milky Way, changes.In summer, we look out towards the edge of this pancake, so we see fewer stars, but in winter we look right into the heart of it. Stargazing is also particularly good when the Moon is below the horizon all night long during the new moon phase of the monthly lunar cycle."If you're not rugged up to the nines, you are going to get very, very shivery, very, very rapidly," Dr Musgrave says.
According to Dr Musgrave, who has been an amateur astronomer for decades, you'll need to let your eyes adjust to the darkness.To understand where certain stars or celestial objects are, he also recommends a sky guide app on your phone. This will allow you to put in your location, and will provide you a digital version of the sky above.
Winter Sky Guide Night Sky Astronomy Milky Way National Science Week Southern Cross Stargazing Scorpius Moon Stars
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