Southern Hemisphere – Astronomy Now

See Mercury’s very favourable dawn display under southern skies

25 April 2018 Ade Ashford

Have you ever seen the closest planet to the Sun? If you wish to tick Mercury off your To-See list, particularly if you live in the Southern Hemisphere, now until the middle of May is the time to be scrutinising the eastern sky about an hour before sunrise. Mercury also has a close encounter with an old crescent Moon on 14 May.

See a summer solstice full Moon rising tonight

20 June 2016 Ade Ashford

Look low to the south-southeast at 11:35pm BST tonight and, if the current British “monsoon” clears, you will see the full Moon rising at dusk at the instant the 2016 summer solstice occurs in the Northern Hemisphere. The last time that this happened on the same UK day was 22 June 1967.

Pearls of the Southern Skies

5 May 2015 Astronomy Now

Have you encountered the ‘War and Peace Nebula’, the ‘Furious Dancer Galaxy’ or the ‘Carina Smile Nebula’? These objects and a wealth of Southern Hemisphere deep-sky treasures feature in this well-written landscape-format coffee table book, says Nik Szymanek.

Deep-Sky Companions: Southern Gems

24 April 2015 Astronomy Now

Well-known astronomer and writer Stephen James O’Meara has taken James Dunlop’s 19th century opus as the basis for his survey of 120 southern sky objects for the modern astronomer.