Russell And Charlie Enjoy A Night Under The Stars

Charlie’s First Southern Sky Views An Eye-Opener

For Russ, seeing the night sky is nothing new, being quite the expert on the subject. However for Charlie, looking skywards through an observatory grade telescope was a brand new experience.

Viewing conditions were ideal and as is customary, we commenced with some interesting and bright stars, each with a different story to tell. We quickly then progressed our tour to larger objects further out in space, typically magnificent globular star clusters, which have a wonderful unique appearance. As it happens, the Southern Skies are famous for the two greatest globular clusters known and we have a front row seat to view them from the Southern Hemisphere. Spectacular.

The night progressed to view different star forming regions – large gas clouds or nebula as thney are individually called. These take all shapes and sizes and the biggest of them all is once again a Southern Sky favourite, the Tarantula Nebula. It’s huge and distant, situated outside our own Milky Way system and inside a very nearby galaxy. Our tour evening included star clusters and “local” galaxies … Russell enjoyed revisiting some old familiar sights; Charlie was blown away!