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Southern skies and Northern skies

Urban Astronomer avatarPosted on by

It’s another Science Explainy Bit episode, and today we answer a question asked by another podcaster while interviewing us for their show. The host wanted to know how the view of southern skies compares to that of the northern hemisphere. I gave a quick answer before we moved on to another topic, but I would have liked to give a more detailed and complete answer. Which brings us to this episode, in which I describe how there really isn’t a single sky for the North or the South. But the sky in the USA does still look different to what we have here in South Africa, and I explain why.

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Posted in The Urban Astronomer Podcast Tagged , permalink

About Allen Versfeld

Allen is an amateur astronomer, an IT professional, a podcaster, a father of five beautiful kids, a barely competent chess player, and the owner and publisher of the Urban Astronomer podcast and website. He is also the director of the Citizen Science Section of the Astronomical Society of South Africa, where he tries to help ASSA members do good work with citizen science projects. Now on Mastodon!

Comments

Southern skies and Northern skies — 3 Comments

  1. Very interesting podcast Allen, very well explained without any visual aid! Maybe you could follow it up with a explanation of precession and proper motion. I think a lot of amateur astronomers have a problem understanding the subtle movement of objects in the sky including the interaction between objects in our solar system. What does J2000.0 coordinates mean and why you should not enter “on the date” coordinates on a goto system with a J2000.0 data base. I know its not your cup of tee, but those with goto systems find it surprising to learn that the planetary data is less accurate than the star and deep sky object data base of their goto system and that they should never “sync” on a planet.
    Thank you and keep well

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    • Thank you, Piet, that’s a great idea for a topic. I touched on it very briefly in an earlier episode where I took on the Flat Earth brigade, but there’s so much room to dig in and explain it properly!

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  2. I found this podcast fascinating.
    Whilst I found a fair bit of it difficult to grasp entirely, & I enjoyed replaying much of it several times to better try & understand some, it was very interesting – thank you!

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