Stargazing for Beginners

Come outside. Look up at the Milky Way, sweeping from the southwest horizon to the northeast. All you need for a good night's viewing is yourself, a good idea of where south and east are, and your hands.

Gaia, goddess of the earth, asked Scorpio to kill Orion who vowed to kill all the animals. Scorpio killed Orion & Gaia rewarded him by placing him in the night sky. You can see him chasing Orion across the sky in springtime.

In a wooden canoe, on a lake in Brazil, and accompanied by a frog chorus, we are reminded to take the time to go outside and gaze up at the night sky and bathe in its beauty.

Tens of thousands of satellites orbit the earth and reflect the sunlight. The International Space station is the largest & brightest man made object orbiting the earth. In this way, we humans have created our own stars.

Many stories look up to the night sky for inspiration. From the Owl and the Pussycat who looked up to the stars above to many myths and legends from around the world, inspiration is drawn from the skies.

It snaps and crackles, it pops and claps. Aurora Borealis is the northern lights, Aurora Australis is the southern lights in the southern hemisphere. This stunning light show can be seen from some parts of Tasmania.

The universe is a chaotic place with constant construction and destruction and stars being constantly created and destroyed. Earth safely continues in its orbit without hitting other objects, but space junk litters the skies.

The overview effect describes the feeling astronauts experienced while looking back at the small dot of earth, our home in the magnitude of space.