The Emu Rising out of the East and Climbing overhead through May, June, July and August under clear winter Bortle 1 skies, is something quite special, that is hard to picture if you haven't experienced it first hand.
About 15 years ago we ran an Ozsky event in mid May, where the Emu was high Overhead about Midnight. One of the attendees was at his first Ozsky and had never seen the Southern Skies. On the first day he had flown in from New Zealand in the morning and then driven to Coonabarabran in the afternoon. We had dinner about 5:30pm and he said to me "I'm really tired and want to take a nap before observing, can you come and wake me at midnight please and then I'll observe till dawn?" I went and woke him at Midnight as requested and as we were walking back to the Telescopes he looked up and there was the Emu high in the Eastern Sky in all it's glory. He actually started crying and said to me "I could never have imagined that the Southern Hemisphere skies could be so magnificent just naked eye"
This experienced northerner can testify! I grew up in the Texas Hill Country under Bortle 1 (back then) skies and developed a profound appreciation for the northern sky. But years of inhabiting cities jaded my passion…until I went walkabout in the Centralian Desert for half a decade.
The first time I headed out bush from civilization (such as civilisation is in the Red Centre) was to camp at Henbury Meteorites Conservation Reserve to observe the Eta Aquarids. I consider the site to define Bortle 0: cloudless, cobalt blue skies from horizon to 360° horizon just before sunset, 0% humidity (with dew points well below freezing), zero light domes, and completely devoid of people and all powered infrastructure. The moon wasn't supposed to set until after 2 am, so I set an alarm for 4…but nature called at around 3:30. I stepped out of the tent, and with 100% dark-adapted eyes I looked up…
Nothing in my childhood or 30 years of observational astronomy prepared me for such a spectacle. The magesty of the Carina Arm and the Core blared down at me from their perch at zenith, and every facet of the Great Rift dragged my eyes to and fro like a pair of madmen. I was overcome by extreme vertigo and joy and wonder and sadness and regret for my ignorance…and my racing thoughts wandered to the Greek philosophers and all the natural philosophers who came after them whose spark of curiosity and wonder must have been kindled by such sights. It took me a good 15 minutes to recover my sense of place and purpose. Fortunately, my camera was already set up on my EQ2 mount for the meteor shower, so with shaky hands I aimed it at zenith and captured several frames that are still the first posts in my CN gallery.
I was so moved by the experience, I set about learning the structure of the Milky Way. I even created a visualization guide that I posted a couple months later, which still serves as the basis for my understanding of the largest structure we can physically observe:
https://www.cloudyni...and-perception/
As my knowledge of the southern sky grew exponentially, I began to give night sky tours to both northerners and southerners—and friends and colleagues began requesting them on demand (bribing me with bottles of Shiraz). And the feedback for one of the sessions was…
"Great tour. Given with all the zeal of the recently converted."
Even the typical Australian doesn't appreciate what they have—99% of them live in bright cities on the coast. On another bushcamping occasion—this one at Rainbow Valley Conservation Reserve—the Bortle 1 sky was contaminated by the lights from some Queenslanders on their own Centralian walkabout. Two couples had sold all their possessions and bought a caravan with a trailer to travel the bush of Australia ("with a swag upon my shoulder…"). The trailer had side panels that opened like the doors on a DMC DeLorean—and each was equipped with a set of powerful orange lights that lit up the Outback like a footy field.
As I grumbled at such insanity, my wife decided to approach them and disarmed them with her charm (and her thick American accent). Curious about my AP, they summoned me over for a chin wag. My passion for their native sky won them over, and I was soon pointing out structures and objects with my green laser pointer (which I carried with me at the time for such occasions). As I used my hand to shade my eyes from their illumination panels, one of the Queenslanders instinctively said, "Maybe we should turn out the lights so we can see better…?" Great idea! 
That tour ended with,
"You don't do this for a living?"
I left them with the counterspectacle to look forward to later that night: the retiring of the vernal Milky Way to the full horizon, when on the Tropic of Capricorn the sky dome is eerily devoid of all but the LMC and SMC. And by dawn, a couple of them had witnessed it as they walked to the long drop for their late night nature calls.
So yes, south is better than north. I miss the southern sky dearly—and never once have I similarly missed the north.
BQ
Edited by BQ Octantis, 03 July 2025 - 12:29 PM.
