Southern Sky

Now that I am home again it is time to sort all the photos that were taken in South Africa and post a few of my favourite images. One thing that I did not do on the trip was spend enough time at night observing the splendours of the southern hemisphere sky.  Some of the finest celestial objects cannot be seen from Canada and they are well worth the effort to stay up at night, even after a long day of birding.

Here is an image taken on the lawn of the Kruisa Moya Nature Lodge showing the Milky Way with the Southern Cross low near the horizon. The dark CoalSack Nebula (or head of the Emu in Australia) lies along the upper left side of the Southern Cross.  (image taken with a Canon 5D MarkII and 20 mm lens)

Off to the left of this view lies one of the most spectacular globular clusters, the size of a full moon, known as 47 Tucanae (containing millions of stars) and the Small Magellanic Cloud (a close dwarf galaxy). Below is an image taken with a 100mm lens.

47 Tuc and SMC