Astronomy – October 2019

50 ASTRONOMY • OCTOBER 2019

What’s all this excitement and all of

the bold statements about the southern

sky about? I’ve been an observer for 40

years and have spent many thousands of

hours at the eyepiece. But there’s some-

thing really special about seeing the

Orion Nebula high in the sky, gleaming

in all its glory. And then swinging your

head around toward the south, in the

same sky and at the same moment, and

seeing the Carina Nebula, immensely

larger and brighter. What an incredible

thing! And all I need do for some to

remind them of how special Crux the

Southern Cross is to see, is to recall a

certain song by Crosby, Stills, and Nash.

But the rubber really hits the road for

deep-sky observers when it comes to a

whole gang of bright, southern objects

that most northerners don’t even know

about. Early in the evenings, Orion lies

overhead, and you can trace the Milky

Way southward through Sirius and Canis

Major down to Canopus, and toward the

horizon. The early period provides an

opportunity to see many objects you

might see from your American backyard,

but placed much higher in the sky. And

looking through one atmosphere rather

than many — the attenuated fog of par-

ticles and water vapor when objects are

low in the sky — makes a huge difference.

The late evening really cranks up the

excitement. Now we have the mainline

deep south rising. We can see the

Southern Cross, the Carina Nebula, and

many other objects in the area. There’s

the Southern Pleiades (IC 2602) and its

neighbor NGC 3532, two of the finest,

largest open clusters in the sky. What

about Alpha and Beta Centauri? How

cool is it to look at Alpha Centauri in a

telescope and know that it, along with its

little companion Proxima, makes up the

closest star system to the Sun, just 4.3

light-years away?

The early morning hours ratchet up

the excitement even further, for those

hardy enough to stay up really late. How

about seeing Centaurus lead Scorpius

and Sagittarius on a majestic rise, bring-

ing the direction of the center of the gal-

axy far higher in the sky than you’ve ever

seen? Centaurus itself hosts a long list of

treasures, highlighted by the sky’s great-

est globular cluster, Omega Centauri. A

medium-size telescope will show its great

ball of stars resolved so nicely that it

brings to mind images of orbiting this

Just north of Omega Centauri lies one of the sky’s most incredible interacting galaxies, Centaurus A
(NGC 5128). This peculiar system is the result of a galactic merger, and may presage what the Milky Way
and Andromeda galaxies will look like 5 or 6 billion years from now. MICHAEL SIDONIO

The largest and brightest globular cluster in the sky

is Omega Centauri (NGC 5139), visible to the naked

eye. Its million suns stand out spectacularly through

medium and large telescopes. TONY HALLAS