Star spotting down-under

Western Australia has got some of the best stargazing country in the world. Clear unpolluted air, fine and mild weather and access to many fine sights only available in the southern hemisphere help to make it so. Southern skies simply have more bright stars than northern skies do. We also have two bright galaxies visible to the naked eye that have no equivalent in the north. Our own Milky Way galaxy displays its brightest and densest parts only from the south. First time observers from other parts of the world are often blown away by the spectacle, as are city dwellers that venture out beyond their light polluted skies.

During summer the famous Southern Cross begins the night low down in the southeast, climbing up and around the south celestial pole (that point of rotation in the sky that the Earth turns around). Orion the Hunter dominates up high, playing second fiddle only to Sirius, the brightest and most dominating star in our local region of space. On those moonless nights Argos, the ship of Jason and the Argonauts, sails across one of the brightest parts of the Milky Way.

Winter skies are best seen from the north of WA where one blue-sky-day leads into another and the nights are consistently balmy and clear. Stargazing in the tropics also has the advantage in being so far up around the curve of the Earth that most of the northern hemisphere sky is visible too. Scorpio and Sagittarius reign the sky becoming lost in the starfields that obscure the centre of the Milky Way.

If you are one of those who have looked up there and wondered, one of the best ways to find out more and where we fit into it all is to spend a few hours under the sky with Greg Quicke’s Astro Tours. Astro Tours runs April to December in Broome when the Kimberley skies are truly some of the best on the planet. January to March is the rainy season up north so shifting the whole Astro Tours operation down to clear summer skies on Rottnest Island makes perfect sense.

Greg’s homespun insights are so straightforward, they will easily trigger a few of your own as you become familiar with some of the brighter stars, constellations and planets. Big telescopes, lasers and a healthy dose of fun help to round out an educational and entertaining evening.