When You Come From London, The Night Sky Is Upside Down Here!

A Birthday Present For Grace While Getting Things Right Side Up For Alfie!

 

Alfie a “Londoner” and Grace an Aussie, met in London. Both returned to Melbourne early this year – Alfie for his career in science and Grace resuming studies in psychology. The night sky has been an interest for both of them and Honeysuckles Astronomy Tours presented not only the right birthday gift opportunity for Grace, but also an ideal way to explore their common interest further. For Alfie, a very different picture awaited him when Grace’s present was unwrapped. The sky he grew up with in the Northern Hemisphere was now upside down.

 

This opposite  view of the world, of course, only applies to stars and formations that can be viewed from both hemispheres. Deep southern skies cannot be seen from northern latitudes and so were all new to Alfie. But great constellations like Orion – a very recognizable asterism (formation of stars) from everywhere, was clearly the “wrong way up” … Given Orion was named from the northern hemisphere in the first place and “the hunter” is after all head down and feet up(!) to us southerners, it is a fair point to argue it is upside down here in the south! We may need to concede this point.

 

Fortunately to offset this mild inconvenience, our southern skies do host some magnificent objects for our northern friends to admire and Alfie and Grace had the pleasure of being immersed into some of them on their tour. It was an excellent night in spite of some recent cloud challenges from Victoria’s weather. Our last object was a return view of Jupiter, seen earlier in the evening. Quite possibly assisted by our observers having acquired better observing skills even in just an hour or two, more detail was seen in the planet’s superb system of bands traversing it. It was an excellent night and Grace described the experience as the best birthday present she had ever received. No more need be said 🙂  We are delighted to hear that!