Father’s Day Present For Boris Delivers The Greatest Arachnid In Space!

Murielle’s Gift Provides Galactic Delights

In the midst of a challenging week where rain and floods were menacing much of Victoria, Honeysuckles Astronomy Tours was fortunate with largely clear skies for the tours scheduled. And with Murielle, Boris, Coline and friend Anna, a successful tour eventually occurred – albeit with early cloud interference. All had views of the gas giant planets, but this tour required a little perseverance as tours occasionally do. For Boris, for whom the tour was principally aimed, the night was a major viewing success.

One of the southern skies standout objects is a giant star forming nebula located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, 160,000 light years away. It is the tangled and gnarly web of the Tarantula Nebula! This fascinating formation is a huge gas cloud producing new stars and at first glance clearly presents as an object with “attitude”. It, along with other deep space objects including the largest barred spiral galaxy known with a diameter twice that of our own galaxy, had the benefit of clear skies which arrived later in our observing evening. When one considers that the light from this giant galaxy had left it back at the time when dinosaurs were still walking around on Earth, waiting an hour or so to view it does not seem such an extravagance after all. By viewing night’s end the night sky had delivered many fabulous views, much to our delight.