A guide to what's up in the sky for Southern Australia
Starwatch - October 2024 - Mon 30th Sep 2024
Published 30th Sep 2024
After a spectacular encounter with Pluto back in July 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft was redirected to visit a more distant object, known as 2014 MU69.
OCTOBER’S DEEP SKY HIGHLIGHT - Sun 29th Sep 2024
Published 29th Sep 2024
M31—The Andromeda Galaxy Distance: 2.5 million Light Years
Starwatch - September 2024 - Sat 31st Aug 2024
Published 31st Aug 2024
Spring is just around the corner, and with it, comes the promise of warmer evenings and clearer skies. And hopefully the opportunity to spend more time looking up!
NGC 253 – Galaxy in Sculptor - Fri 30th Aug 2024
Published 30th Aug 2024
NGC 253 is the brightest member of the Sculptor Group of galaxies.
Starwatch - August 2024 - Tue 30th Jul 2024
Published 30th Jul 2024
f you're brave enough to venture outside these cold winter nights, you'll be greeted by the heart of our Milky Way galaxy directly overhead. Find yourself a dark space in your backyard on a clear moonless night, and look straight up.
The Swan Nebula - Mon 29th Jul 2024
Published 29th Jul 2024
M17 – The Swan Nebula in Sagittarius
Starwatch July 2024 - Mon 8th Jul 2024
Published 8th Jul 2024
Look up overhead on any of these frosty winter’s nights, and as long as you have a dark area away from direct lighting, you’ll see the band of the Milky Way shining brightly.
Merging Galaxies - Sun 7th Jul 2024
Published 7th Jul 2024
NGC 4038-4039 Merging Galaxies - The Antennae. Distance: 45 million Light Years.
Starwatch June 2024 - Sun 2nd Jun 2024
Published 2nd Jun 2024
About half-way up the northern evening sky, a bright star shines.
The Trifid Nebula - Sat 1st Jun 2024
Published 1st Jun 2024
M20 – The Trifid Nebula in Sagittarius
Starwatch May 2024 - Thu 2nd May 2024
Published 2nd May 2024
A myriad of bright stars adorn the late autumn evening sky.
Galaxy NGC 5128 - Wed 1st May 2024
Published 1st May 2024
Galaxy NGC 5128—Centaurus A
Comet Pons-Brooks - Wed 10th Apr 2024
Published 10th Apr 2024
Looking west on the evening of April 27., 30 minutes after sunset. Locate the orange star Aldebaran, then scan to the left until you come to a fuzzy spot in the sky. Train your binoculars on it, the comet will be 239 million kilometres away. Graphic generated with Stellarium planetarium software.
M104 - The Sombrero Galaxy - Tue 9th Apr 2024
Published 9th Apr 2024
M104 - The Sombrero Galaxy. Distance: 31 Million Light Years
Starwatch - April 2024 - Mon 8th Apr 2024
Published 9th Apr 2024
Some of the brightest stars in the whole sky can be seen during these crisp autumn evenings.
Starwatch - March 2024 - Wed 6th Mar 2024
Published 6th Mar 2024
What a wonderful time of the year this is to be observing the night sky. The weather is warm, the nights clear, and the Milky Way shines directly overhead!
Object of the Month - Mon 4th Mar 2024
Published 4th Mar 2024
Eta Carinae Nebula (NGC 3372)
Distance: 7500 Light Years
Right Ascension: 10 : 43.8 | Declination: -59 : 52
After a spectacular encounter with Pluto back in July 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft was redirected to visit a more distant object, known as 2014 MU69.
Like Pluto, this object is a member of the Kuiper Belt — a wide band of iceballs beyond the orbit of Neptune, the most-distant major planet. These objects are frozen leftovers from the birth of the planets. Astronomers say Kuiper Belt objects are so far from the sun that they have spent 4.6 billion years in the deep freeze and should give us a good picture of what conditions were like when the solar system was first forming.
Other stars have their own Kuiper Belts. One of the best examples is the bright star Fomalhaut. You can find it almost overhead during these early Spring nights. There are no other bright stars around it, so it’s pretty easy to pick out.
Fomalhaut has at least one planet — one of the few exoplanets that’s ever been photographed. But Fomalhaut also has a giant disk of dust that orbits beyond the planet. The dust appears to be supplied by colliding comets — balls of rock and ice like those in the Kuiper Belt.
A study a few years ago said there are hundreds of billions of comet-like objects in the belt around Fomalhaut. What’s more, up to a couple of thousand of them may collide every day. The smash-ups pulverize the colliding bodies, spraying out gas, dust, and rock. Over time, this material spreads out, helping to keep the disk full of fresh dust.
And coincidentally, this disk of material is about the same distance from Fomalhaut as the Kuiper Belt is from the Sun; a realm of icy bodies far from the star’s warmth.
And there’s a visitor from the outer solar system, which will be visible in the western sky after sunset from about mid-October.
Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) is a long-period comet from the Oort Cloud, a sphere around our solar system home to millions of comets, and it's in an elliptical orbit of roughly 80,000 years. It was first discovered at over seven Earth-sun distances by astronomers at China’s Purple Mountain Observatory in January 2023 and later re-found by the Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) search station in Sutherland, South Africa, in February 2023.
Comet A3 made its closest approach to the Sun on September 28, at about 59 million km. That's the riskiest time for a comet, which can break apart because of the sun's influence. It's what makes comets, and in particular their future brightness, incredibly difficult to predict. At the time of writing, it appears to have survived the encounter. It will pass closest to Earth on October 12, when it will pass about 71 million km from Earth.