One last bit from the Southern Hemisphere: check out today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, a panoramic image from the Very Large Telescope Array in Chile. All sorts of goodies are in view that you don’t see from north of the equator: the Milky Way’s largest satellite galaxies and a few prominent constellations, Centaurus and the Southern Cross. The planets and the moon are the same, of course.
The zodiacal light is way cool–you have to be in very clear weather conditions to see it. No city lights either. Dust in the inner solar system reflects sunlight back to us. I confess I’ve never seen this subtle phenomenon.
The image above is the Milky Way’s largest satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, as imaged from the International Space Station.
