[18 nights in Australia     -by-    A.Appleyard]
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  In the course of a year or so of stargazing since a chance visit to Jodrell
Bank in late summer 1982, I gradually realized how much I was missing being so
far north; latitude plus the inevitable dirty horizon loses everything south of
-30deg decl, and the great area of circumpolar sky made me realize that I was
losing more in the south. What is visible in Britain gives me plenty of
interest, but there came a time when looking longingly at the bottom ends of the
sector maps in Nortons no longer satisfied me when I saw such things as the top
end of Scorpio for a time low in the south, and knew that the rest of it was
only a little way below, but would never rise. To the classical world the far
south of the sky was as proverbially unobservable as the far side of the Moon
more recently, as R.H.Allen in "star names, their lore and meaning" (publ.
Dover(USA)) quoted from Virgil as header for his chapter on Octans:-
              Hic vertex nobis semper sublimis, at illum
              sub pedibus Styx atra videt, Manesque profundi.
  So it remained until the 16th century when Europeans sailed past the equator,
and Bayer of Augsburg filled in the empty south with 12 new constellations named
mostly after tropical exotica such as the Toucan and the Flying Fish, strange
sounding newcomers below Ptolemy's traditional 48 which had been held sufficient
for so long. In the end I had to follow them: where to? Lacaille found the Cape
a good site, when he resurveyed the south and squeezed in 14 faint extra
constellations named after instruments - some of them rather superfluous - and
to Sir John Herschel later, but South Africa smells of danger and Australia has
more reliable clear skies anyway. What impression would I get 85deg south of my
home latitude, with familiar constellations gone or upside-down in the north,
the Hidden Pole high in the sky, and much of the sky occupied by Bayer's exotic
wildlife and Lacaille's instruments rotating the other way around Octans
amidmost?
  1984 June 21 was for me the "longest day" in both senses, as I had flown
little before that, when I went the 2 miles to Ringway in the early morning. I
can give no account of luggage going astray, as I took only a cabin bag, plus as
much as would fit on my person, including 10 boxes of 3M ASA1000 colour slide
film in my pockets - airports may claim that their X-ray machines "will not harm
films", but I do not trust them with film that fast, and furthermore repeatedly,
as I would be changing planes 3 times each way, which also multiplies the chance
of straying or theft of hold-luggage, as is too often reported.
  After the first leg, my first sight of Gatwick - 5 hours of it - and through
the windows a view of countryside which seemed already somehow greener and more
fertile than the north. Next leg was by Garuda (Indonesian airline, which
Explorers Travel Club usually uses), and as I ran into night over Turkey I first
saw new stars - I had luckily been given a right (south) window seat, and when
most of the cabin lights were switched off for the in-flight movie, some
ingenuity with a brochure shaded out enough of the rest of the light for me to
see out - the Scorpion's tail, complete and clear of the horizon for the first
time, incredibly sparkling and bright even through 3 layers of scratchy perspex
cabin window, and to its right the top left part of Centaurus, back-tilted as it
started to sink again below the rim of earth. Below, the land was dark and
without street-lights. Seeing these strange stars in a strange place first
seriously reminded me what I had undertaken, at 6 miles up on the edge of space.
The horizon was 3 deg below horizontal and noticeably curved; the sky was
late-evening dark even in daytime, except along the horizon. As the journey
passed, those stars rotated gradually as the airliner followed them southwards
as they tried to set. A look out of a north window showed Cassiopeia still
there, so no chance yet of seeing Crux which is directly opposite.
  Morning came over the Indian ocean; at Singapore we took off just before a
tropical thunderstorm came over, and 5 hours wait in the tropical afternoon in
Jakarta to change planes. The eternal moist-tropical haze promised little help
for any local astronomers; the vertically-setting equatorial sun disappeared
surprisingly quickly. I went out onto the tarmac briefly while people were
getting on & off at Denpasar on Bali; shading-out some headlights with my arms I
looked up: above, and a lot higher, was Centaurus again - and below it, the
Southern Cross. Saturn and Mars in Libra were nearly overhead. I got talking,
and found myself explaining to two Indonesian ground-workmen exotic southern
constellations that I had never seen before except in star-atlases!
  Day came on the runway in Melbourne which was the last stop before Sydney, and
my first sight of Australia. I slept in the afternoon in the Sydney Airport
Hilton and woke after dark. My room happened to face south; airport lights
about, but the sky was black, with one bright star. Such was my first sight of
Canopus, which fails to rise in any part of Europe. On the hotel forecourt there
was plenty to see in the sky, but the hotel blocked out much of the south polar
area.
  Next day I flew on to Coonabarabran in the New South Wales outback, which had
a small airport to serve the nearby Siding Spring Mountain observatory. (Note: -
in Sydney many inland flights go from the Ansett terminal or the East and West
terminal, which are some way from the international terminal, even though
"Qantas" may be on the ticket.) I was booked in for 16 nights in the Flinders
Motor Inn on Oxley Highway in Coonabarabran, a mile from the town centre. The
town is small and it is not far to get away from street lights. After dark I
went out and - camera crisis!! I just then found that a repairman in England had
left it unable to make time-exposures, a small matter to ordinary snapshotting
tourists, but in astrophotography.... I managed to borrow a set of very small
screwdrivers from the motel manager; what I had to do to a good camera body is
not for those of a nervous disposition to read about, but I managed to jury-rig
it to make time shots, and buy another camera locally for ordinary daytime shots
- but what else to do in the Australian outback? The nearest public camera
repairers and film-developers are in Sydney.
  I came at the end of a long spell of continuous clear nights, but after my
first night in Coonabarabran the next 2 nights were overcast as one of too many
depressions sailed eastwards south of Australia and blew dampness inland,
including later in my stay the first snow for twenty years!!, although the
winters there are, compared with England, like autumn turning into spring, but
it freezes sometimes at night. Walking into town in a snowstorm was <not> what I
had expected only 8 degrees south of the Tropic of Capricorn, in exchange for
one of the hottest driest English summers in memory. Fortunately I brought a
balaclava and my motorcycling suit, for it is cold in the dark under the stars -
better than an ordinary coat that leaves the legs cold. Daytime exploring found
a field a mile south along the Oxley Highway large enough for me to see low
stars without too much nuisance from the eucalyptus forests, behind a house
where lived a woman who ran the tourist information office in the town!
  Next clear night afterwards I went out in the gathering dark. Canopus shone
above the drive to the road, and Centaurus above the buildings. Oxley Highway
led me due south: I tended to call it Eighteen-wheeler Racecourse!, for it was
the main inland route from Victoria to Queensland, and one passed every few
minutes day and night, forcing me to shut one eye to keep the night-sight in it,
keep one open to see the onrushing monster with a whole constellation of lights
on its sides, and stop till it passed. It also helped to have a stick to feel
about with!, as too much torch spoilt the night-sight, even though I could see
surprisingly well by merely starlight - plus Jupiter in Sagittarius, which cast
a slight shadow at times.
  Behind me, upside-down, were such familiar constellations as rose to the sight
85 deg south of my home latitude, and in front of me was the alien south, as I
stood in the silent Australian night gazing at Octans and the Hidden Pole, which
many in ancient times had believed that no living man could ever see. Centaurus
was culminating, and the Southern Cross with the beautiful binocular cluster
Kappa Crucis the "Jewel Box"; Scorpio like a docker's hook lay flat with tail to
right above Sagittarius over the eastern horizon. Argo Navis was bows-up to the
southwest with Canopus as propeller at the bottom, huge, and packed with bright
stars - no wonder astronomers from Bartschius onwards sought in various ways to
subdivide it; but it resembles its name-object, although the only bit adequately
visible in England, Puppis north of -30deg decl (which Bartschius the inventor
of Camelopardus sought to detach as Gallus the Cockerel) looked like an
afterthought addition, behind the back of Canis Major standing on its head over
the black ridges of the distant forested Warrumbungle Mountains westwards as the
twilight faded.
  To its right was Procyon straight below the head of Hydra which trailed across
the sky complete and nearly overhead, and not low in the south as in England. In
the eastward bow-end of Argo, two bright identical diamonds are enough like Crux
to explain why navigators of old seeing them through gaps in cloud confused them
often, and one of them is called the False Cross; above them was the Eta Carinae
Nebula, and other binocular objects are in that area. Below them, the Bayer
constellations Apus (Bird of Paradise), Chamaeleon, Hydrus (Lesser Watersnake),
and Pavo (Peacock) followed each other round the pole. No horizon glows and no
aeroplane trails across my shots, only a scattering of lights in the north from
the town - ordinary bulbs and no sodium. Plenty for my binoculars, including the
two brightest globular clusters in the sky, Omega Centauri and Xi Tucanae or 47
Tucanae, the Tarantula Nebula, and the double-first-mag Alpha Centauri which is
the nearest naked-eye star.
  Part of the Plough was briefly low in the far north at first dark, hardly
clearing the distant forested mountains. Above it Leo was upside-down, and to
its right and higher Virgo, which I saw better there than here. Next along the
Zodiac, Saturn and Mars in Libra happened to line up pointing to Arcturus, which
is rather on its own without the northerner's recourse of finding it from the
Plough. Cancer was setting in the northwest - for the first time I could see
every zodiac constellation in the same night except the one that the sun was in.
Later, one night, the waxing crescent moon in Virgo hung near the horizon with
both horns pointing straight up.
  I could let ASA1000 time shots run even to 2 minutes without fogging by
sky-glow, being stopped only by the risk of trailing, for I used a fixed mount.
A fortunate bunching of the 5 external planets in Libra to western Sagittarius
even let me take a shot with all of them on. Grus can cause a photographic false
alarm - its main axis has 4 wide doubles, all separated in about the same
direction, alarmingly like the effect of camera movement in mid-exposure! The
Eta Carinae nebula always presents bright red on my slides (and also on a slide
that I bought once). It seems that it is the brightest object in the sky in the
infra-red, which catches the red phosphor in the film.
  The sky, except for clouded-out nights, was incredibly clear, no horizon-haze,
and stars bright right down to the ground. One shot shows the Lagoon Nebula at
only about 3 deg altitude, although the sky is blue from morning twilight. When
at midnight I lay on my back in the buffalo grass looking at Sagittarius
overhead, I had some trouble sorting out the familiar "teapot" shape from the
crowd of stars and the bright billowing clouds of milky way flowing through it.
Nearby in Ophiuchus I easily saw Uranus naked-eye. No trouble seeing the
Magellanic Clouds about 10 degrees up at bottoming, or Hydrus like a crossed
continental '7' standing on the south horizon at first dark. Achernar was just
below earth at its bottom, and rose as Canopus set, and Capricornus and Aquarius
followed Sagittarius almost straight up. Beside them it was odd to see
Fomalhaut, so familiar as a "south-peeper" from home, rising higher and higher,
and in the small hours overhead - and the complete outline of the Southern fish,
which had in England persisted in hiding behind horizon-haze. The Summer
Triangle culminated upside-down in the north soon after midnight; Vega and Deneb
rose and set within the night, and did not rise high; they are not visible in
the southern summer at all. The sky was so clear that in front of Vega I could
see Beta and Gamma Draconis culminate only 3deg at most over the distant
forested mountains north of the plain of the willow-lined Castlereagh river
which Coonabarabran is build beside.
  I spent endless uninterrupted hours taking slide shots of constellation areas
as the stars rotated about Octans and the Southern Birds rose from behind the
left end of the low hill of Warrumbrae as Centaurus got lower and Argo set
except for its south edge lying along the horizon below the pole. Achernar rose,
and Eridanus after it, south end first, then its big loop with Fornax, until a
light appeared on the eastern earth, so bright although so low that I at first
thought some early-riser had switched a house-light on, but it slowly rose and
was Rigel. Pegasus in the north was "right-way-up" for once, astonishingly
lifelike, even to some fainter stars like a jockey! Andromeda followed, pulling
up Aries and then Taurus - in which I saw and photographed the zodiacal light,
quite clearly - low over the northern earth, and not rising high, like a barge
with Aldebaran as propeller, and even less like their name-animals than the
other way up in England. Orion rose before light - Rigel on top! - and to his
right Canis Major lying on its back, and Columba, which I had seen set soon
after first dark. Further to the right, Canopus was again as high as the pole,
and below it the whole of the great hexagon of south Puppis had risen again; but
Centaurus and the Southern Cross had disappeared. Twilight came as Sagittarius
touched the west horizon and the first part of briefly-seen low-rising Perseus
rose below Aries. Soon the kookaburras announced the coming of the day - but
even in daytime the clear air was obvious: the sky was much darker blue even
looking from the ground than in England, and bright stars stayed visible nearly
to dawn.
  As my 16 nights there passed, the waxing moon gradually curtailed my observing
in the early part of the night. I found living there reasonably cheap - but as a
non-smoking teetotaler I cannot speak for pubs and such; I made no attempt to
look for "night-life", I do not care for such things, and clear nights in any
case were otherwise occupied. The motel provides reasonable dinners. There is a
taxi driver in town who also runs a trip to the Siding Spring Mountain
Observatory and the Warrumbungle National Park, where I went once, including
being shown round the insides of the domes and laboratories where the public is
not usually allowed! I was told that up there the stars are even brighter and
inside a dome with the slit open the eyes can dark-adapt well beyond what a full
sky of stars would allow! After this the snow came, and from the town I could
see it lying on the Warrumbungles around the observatory.
  I spent one night in the Sydney Airport Hilton on the way back: city lights
and nearly-full moon made a fearsome combination, and I only saw 1st & 2nd mags.
Back to the international airport in the early morning - police everywhere and
talk of a drug find, but I was not delayed. The security man there was not
pleased at the amount of metal about my person needing checking. On that flight
I saw so much of the Red Centre of Australia that I did not feel much like
crossing it overland if I went on any Halley's comet tour in 1986. Night came to
me in Jakarta and lasted until Frankfurt am Main, as I was following the
sun. Over south Europe I saw stars outside - Capricornus and Aquarius,
returned to something like a familiar attitude, but Fomalhaut beneath them was
still at an absurd height, and the whole of Grus was visible beneath it. Such
was my last sight of southern stars.
  Back home, after de-Australianizing my body-rhythms, a trip to the developers
removed my chief fear - my film had survived proximity to 7 airport security
X-ray machines before and after exposure, and the spectre of side-leakage of
radiation from these, or even of walking unknowingly through a body X-ray, had
not materialized. It took longer before I stopped expecting the sun to culminate
north at midday. Back home, it was as hot and dry as before, and the back garden
looked like the inside of an incinerator; for the first time broad beans had
dried hard in the pods standing, as if England had been sent Australia's
weather and vice-versa. I felt very let-down coming back to sodiumy Manchester
with its inevitable 7deg of horizon total haze loss and being unable more than
half the time to see even Alpha Draconis at mag4 even when there is no cloud
or moon. A view from Winter Hill or Alderley Edge by night shows enough
evidence as to why. But next new moon I had one more look at the low south - a
gale blew the industrial muck away, and before it re-formed I got to Ashley
south of Altrincham where I usually astrophotograph from, and managed to see
and photograph Sagittarius including Epsilon, which someone once described
to me as "the star seen once every two years". The previous late winter I had
managed to get a preview of Columba from Ashley in a similar night of
exceptional clarity after a gale. To think that I have been where the sky is
that clear more often than not, and Argo and Centaurus routine nightly sights!