A guide to what's up in the sky for Southern Australia
Starwatch for September 2025 - Wed 3rd Sep 2025
Published 3rd Sep 2025
A few lingering stars of winter are still in view during the evening. Antares, Altair, Vega have lit up the cold winter nights for us. But there is really only one bright star that puts in its best showing during these early spring nights:
NGC 7293 – The Helix Nebula - Tue 2nd Sep 2025
Published 2nd Sep 2025
Image © Patrick Cosgrove. The Helix Nebula, also known as NGC 7293, is a planetary nebula (PN) located in the constellation Aquarius.
Starwatch for August 2025 - Sun 3rd Aug 2025
Published 3rd Aug 2025
Imagine yourself sitting on a rock on the dark side of Moon, gazing up at the Milky Way. There's no stray lights, no atmosphere to dull your view of the night sky. The stars are so brilliant, so big, you could reach out and touch them.
NGC 4755 - Fri 1st Aug 2025
Published 1st Aug 2025
The Jewel Box Star Cluster. Image © Sergio Equivar, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Starwatch for July 2025 - Thu 3rd Jul 2025
Published 3rd Jul 2025
Look up overhead on any of these frosty winter’s nights, and if you have a dark area away from direct lighting, you’ll see the Milky Way shining brightly.
Galaxy NGC 6744 in Pavo - Wed 2nd Jul 2025
Published 2nd Jul 2025
This is NGC 6744, a spiral galaxy bearing similarities to our home galaxy, the Milky Way.
Starwatch for June 2025 - Mon 2nd Jun 2025
Published 2nd Jun 2025
The winter Milky Way shines across the sky from east to west in a blaze of starlight.
Eta Carinae Nebula (NGC 3372) - Sun 1st Jun 2025
Published 1st Jun 2025
Eta Carinae Nebula (NGC 3372) Distance: 7500 Light Years
Starwatch for May 2025 - Wed 30th Apr 2025
Published 30th Apr 2025
We have recently seen the destructive power of extreme weather events, such as cyclones and the flooding in southwest Queensland. It left in its wake flooded businesses, broken roads, power outages, and other problems. The repair bill will run into billions of dollars.
NGC 5139 - Omega Centauri - Tue 29th Apr 2025
Published 29th Apr 2025
Globular Cluster in Centaurus
Starwatch for April 2025 - Wed 2nd Apr 2025
Published 2nd Apr 2025
The crisp autumn evenings of April offer an ideal opportunity to explore the majesty of the southern sky. Go find yourself a nice dark spot in the back-garden, and let your eyes become accustomed to the darkness. Notice how many more stars you can see, even after a few minutes, as the pupils of your eyes expand to let as much light in as possible.
IC434 -The Horsehead Nebula - Tue 1st Apr 2025
Published 1st Apr 2025
Distance: 1500 Light Years |Constellation - Orion
Starwatch - March 2025 - Mon 3rd Mar 2025
Published 3rd Mar 2025
There's nothing more magical than to lie down on your back lawn on a warm summer evening and gaze up at the brilliant night sky.
Eta Carinae Nebula (NGC 3372) - Sat 1st Mar 2025
Published 1st Mar 2025
Distance: 7500 Light Years
Starwatch - February 2025 - Wed 5th Feb 2025
Published 5th Feb 2025
Two bright beacons hold centre stage in our night sky during February. In the beautiful pastel hues of an Australian summer sunset.
M104 - The Sombrero Galaxy - Tue 4th Feb 2025
Published 4th Feb 2025
Distance: 31 Million Light Years
Starwatch - January 2025 - Wed 1st Jan 2025
Published 1st Jan 2025
There's nothing more magical than to lie down on your back lawn on a warm summer evening and gaze up at the brilliant night sky.
The Pleiades star cluster - Tue 31st Dec 2024
Published 31st Dec 2024
The Pleiades star cluster (The Seven Sisters) Distance: 435 Light Years
Starwatch - December 2024 - Sun 1st Dec 2024
Published 1st Dec 2024
The stars that shine at night do so from immense distances.
Starwatch - November 2024 - Mon 4th Nov 2024
Published 4th Nov 2024
We recently saw the destructive power of hurricanes Milton and Helene, as they cut a path of destruction through various states in the US. They left in their wake flooded businesses, broken roads, power outages, and other problems. The repair bill will run into billions of dollars.
Large Magellanic Cloud - Fri 1st Nov 2024
Published 1st Nov 2024
Distance: 163,000 light years Right Ascension 05 : 23.6 Declination -69 : 45
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
A few lingering stars of winter are still in view during the evening. Antares, Altair, Vega have lit up the cold winter nights for us. But there is really only one bright star that puts in its best showing during these early spring nights:
Fomalhaut, the leading light of Piscis Austrinus, the southern fish. You can find it high in the eastern sky. There are no other bright stars around it, so it’s hard to miss.
Fomalhaut itself is a young and vigorous star. It’s only a few hundred million years old, and it’s bigger and heavier than the Sun. That makes the star hotter and brighter than the Sun, and one reason that Fomalhaut shines so brightly in our night sky. The other reason is that it’s a close neighbour, just 25 light-years away.
A broad disk of dust encircles the young star. Building a planetary system is messy. It starts with small grains of rock and ice that come together to form larger and larger blocks. Some of those big blocks may eventually merge to make planets. But while some of the impacts are slow enough for the blocks to stick together, others are high-speed collisions that rip them apart, scattering debris back into space.
In 2008, astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope directly imaged a tiny dot near the star, and at the time they thought it was a recently formed planet . It was named Fomalhaut b. It’s about three times as massive as Jupiter, the giant of our own solar system, and it’s far, far away from Fomalhaut itself. It takes over 2000 years to complete one revolution around its parent star. However, analyses in 2019 and 2023 of existing and new observations indicate that Fomalhaut b is not a planet, but rather an expanding region of debris from a massive planetesimal collision.
At the other end of the scale, we have a planet in the northern constellation of Cygnus, the Swan, orbiting its parent star at the dizzying rate of 8.5 hours per revolution. In the time it takes you to get a full night's sleep, the Earth-sized fireball of a planet 700 light-years away has already completed an entire year. Imagine going to bed and waking up a year older!
This is one of the shortest orbital periods ever detected. The planet is extremely close to its star, about 40 times closer than Mercury is to the Sun, and astronomers have estimated that its surface temperature may be as high as 2,000oC. In such a scorching environment, the top layer of the planet is likely completely melted, creating a massive, boiling ocean of lava.
The stars that make up the constellation of Cygnus have been identified with some sort of bird by most civilisations of the ancient world. Sometimes known as an eagle, a hen or a pigeon; the image of a graceful swan in full flight is the one I prefer. The star Deneb represents the tail of the swan, whilst Alberio is the beak.
In real life, Deneb is a star of enormous proportions. It is over 60,000 more luminous than our Sun, and 25 times more massive. If we placed our Sun at the same distance that Deneb is from us (1600 light years), then the Sun would be an insignificant little star barely visible in large amateur telescopes.
Alberio is a beautiful double star of blue and gold. A steadily held pair of powerful binoculars should show it as two distinct stars.
Higher in the sky we find Aquila, The Eagle. The brightest star in this constellation is Altair. At a distance from us of only 16 light years, it definitely classifies as a close stellar neighbour. But a bit of a strange character! It is about twice the diameter of our Sun, but spins on its axis in 6 and a half hours (our Sun takes 25 days). As a matter of fact the spin is so rapid, that the star probably resembles a flattened tomato!