Checking Out The Night Sky

At home, I have a star chart with the southern constellations, but I forgot it at home. The names are odd, as if a navigator under Captain James Cook was given half an hour to come up with names and he just looked around his cabin: easel, ship's keel, telescope, swordfish, and the like.

At Roma, I first tried to scan the night sky. Orion dominated the northern sky. The star Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, always seemed so washed-out in the northern sky because it is so close to the light-filled southern horizon. Here, Sirius rules! There were two amazingly-large smudges in the sky too! Nebulae of some sort, maybe the galactic center, or the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. Interrupting my reverie, two horses approached, no doubt looking for an apple or two.

After Carnarvon, I stopped to look again, and, for the first time ever, clearly saw the Zodiacal Light, the light scattered by interplanetary dust in the plane of the ecliptic of the Solar System. The Zodiacal Light is present every night, but it's very hard to see back home due to the light generated by cities. Here, that city light was mostly absent, so you can clearly, clearly see it!

Amazing!