well i haven't been doing very many 60
symbols videos because obviously i don't
live in nottingham anymore we are in
sydney australia and after my contract
in nottingham was over i got a job a
postdoctoral position here in sydney
the southern hemisphere sees some stars
different than what the northern
hemisphere can see so if we use my my
australian prop here this is going to be
the earth and we're going to pretend
that this is the sun
so
the earth goes around the sun
and the earth also rotates so if you
consider the head is the northern
hemisphere and the body is the southern
hemisphere as it rotates and it moves
around the sun
this side can only see things that are
up here
and the body can only see things that
are down here
some things we can see
from both hemispheres like orion and
certain constellations but certain
things you can only see from the north
like the north celestial pole and from
the south there are things that you can
only see there like the southern cross
is probably the most
famous constellation in the southern
hemisphere we have all the really really
great nebulae
the northern hemisphere has some good
ones as well
the northern hemisphere has the has
fantastic galaxies we have a few notable
ones but um i think the our part of the
galaxy which is visible here directly
overhead
is um just fantastic to look at just
even naked eye over night time you can
see all the dust lanes and and
or just the bright lights of all the
beings and beings of stars so maybe we
are fortunate um
but i couldn't call it one way or the
other so one of the highlights of the
southern hemisphere is definitely the
crux is the official constellation
the smallest of the official 88
constellations and it also makes up the
southern the southern cross so the
southern cross is the crux and then
there's a couple other stars that are
attached to it called the pointers one
of the pointers is alpha centaurus which
is actually the nearest star
to the earth so it's if you look at it
through a telescope it looks like a
little double star um and so that little
group are the closest stars that we have
to earth and the sun so alpha centauri
is a big bright one but it's got it's
things we think it's actually a triple
system and one of those stars is proxima
centauri and that's just a little bit
closer than alpha centauri
right well the southern cross is so
famous in the southern hemisphere that
it's on flag so it's actually on five
national flags including australia but a
lot of people do come here to australia
to see the sun skies
and i guess it's because we have a
couple of really close galaxies
magellanic clouds that are really really
close by to our galaxy so people want to
see that and there's nebulae within that
and there are the biggest cluster
visible in the sky is down here is amiga
centauri
so maybe we do have a bit of an unfair
advantage so another thing about the
southern cross if you can usually see it
from inside of the city but when you go
out of the city you can see that and
then as your eyes start to adjust you
start to see more and more stars and the
milky way going across just behind the
southern cross and what you notice as
you start to see more and more stars
that there's there's one dark patch just
to the south of the southern cross where
there's decide
few few stars there so it's actually a
dark nebula it's one of the few dark
nebula that we know um
the horse head nebula in orion is the
other the other well-known one but this
is actually
it makes up the head of one of the the
most well-known indigenous
constellations so it's the head of
what's called the emu
i was quickly told it's not pronounced
emu it's emu
so the emu
is this big bird that goes all the way
across the milky way in the sky and this
dark nebula the colsack nebula makes the
head of this so it just fascinates me
that this culture actually has a story
about the lack of stars in this region
of the sky
so my other favorite things in the south
are actually galaxies they're the large
and small magellanic clouds which you
can't see from the north and it's such a
shame because they're just brilliant oh
they're fantastic to observe um they've
got um well the large magellanic cloud
has um uh the tarantula nebula in there
so that's a really awesome thing to go
and have a look at lots and lots of dust
and and swirling clouds and
quite a few stars with it contained
within that um you can see the the big
milky way shooting across the sky and
then there are these two patches kind of
fuzzy clouds they almost look like um
and one's big and one small they're both
dwarf regular galaxies um
and they're they make up part of the
local group around around our galaxy and
they've definitely influenced some of
the structure of our galaxy because
they're just that close but the fact
that you can see them in the sky and
they're really big oh it's great the
small magenta cloud has
equally has some interesting targets to
look at some small nebulae there ngc 346
which is a fantastic looking nebula and
also has 47 takana really really really
close by which is a fantastic globular
cluster to observe
so yeah even visually these things are
fantastic when i first came to the
southern hemisphere it almost felt like
it was an entirely new universe because
there's there's so much that
isn't in my intuition from growing up
you know orion is all of a sudden upside
down which kind of
makes me feel a little dizzy to some
degree but it's just like i'm exploring
an entirely new universe down here