May 17, 2015
Crosby, Stills and Nash sang:
When you see the Southern Cross
For the first time
You understand now
Why you came this way
We’ve seen a lot of the Southern Cross and I don’t believe it’s ever helped me understand anything.
I’d always expected to be so overwhelmed upon seeing it. Not. It’s just a little group of four stars that are mostly cross shaped. Actually, it might be more accurate to call it the Southern Kite!
But I was surprised to get these pictures of it on our last passage.
(It’s easy to find. There are two bright, pointer stars, Alpha Centauri and Hadar, that point at the Southern Cross. You have to be in the southern hemisphere to see it as it’s near the southern pole star.)
Here. If you can’t pick it out, this should help…
These pictures, that I was so surprised to get from the rolling deck at sea, were taken with our Canon GX7 in it’s hand-held, night scene mode. It’s pretty amazing. It takes multiple exposures and puts them together to make one pretty sharp image. -Rich
