Crux

Right.

And so yeah, this New Schwabenland expedition, um, and I just saw recently that the flag for the Kriegsmarine, uh, you see those stars on the lower flag? Well, that's the Southern Cross.

That is only visible in the Southern Hemisphere.

So why would they have a flag for their U-boat corps, uh, with the Southern Hemisphere Southern Cross on it? Just like in Australia, they also have the Southern Cross or New Zealand.

It's, uh, it's, it's prominent of a constellation in the southern hemisphere as our Big Dipper is in our night sky.

So they went down there and so did hundreds of U-boats and supply ships.

Oh

... a lot of people from overseas come here to some of our little group nights we have, and the first thing they wanna have a look at is the Southern Cross.

Yeah.

You can't really see that above Queensland.

They've got the North Star.

North Star? Yeah.

But, but I, I'd swap the North Star any day for the, uh, Southern Cross.

Uh, the Southern Cross for the North Star.

I thought it was one.

They've got the big fat one, but I think they've got another one with their other stars in the Southern Cross as well.

Because we've just got the Southern Cross.

Which doesn't look like that, so don't look at the sky looking for it.

Yeah, they've

Yeah.

I think the red stars with the white light, just like the four.

Even though that's not what the Southern Cross looks like if you look up in the stars.

I looked it up on the star map.

It was one of the stars of the Southern Cross.

What, thought I, have we been sailing with the Southern Cross in the sky of nights and never known it? Dolts that we are? Gudgeons and moles? I couldn't believe it.

I went over the problem again and verified it.

charmian had the wheel from eight till ten that evening i told her to keep her eyes open and look due south for the southern cross and when the stars came out there shone the southern cross low on the horizon proud no medicine man nor high priest was ever prouder Furthermore, with the prayer-wheel I shot Alpha Crucis, and from its altitude worked out our latitude, and still furthermore I shot the North Star, too, and it agreed with what had been told me by the Southern Cross.

Proud? Why, the language of the stars was mine, and I listened and heard them telling me my way over the deep.

proud i was a worker of miracles i forgot how easily i had taught myself from the printed page i forgot that all the work and a tremendous work too had been done by the master-minds before me the astronomers and mathematicians who had discovered and elaborated the whole science of navigation and made the tables in the epitome I remembered only the everlasting miracle of it, that I had listened to the voices of the stars and been told my place upon the highway of the sea.

We, I think, have a pretty good sense of what that represents.

We've got the Southern Cross because of our position.

in the southern sky.

The Union Jack's the controversial one in some people's minds.

Everybody that is a citizen or inhabits Australia, the nation state.

And I think there's enough in the design that a very smart young guy in Melbourne 125 years ago put together for everybody to at least have something in it or on it that they can call their own and own.

They may not like the Union Jack, but the Southern Cross can represent something.

The Federation Star can represent something.

Alpha and Beta Centauri are also known as the pointer stars.

If you're in the southern hemisphere trying to find the Southern Cross, these are the stars you look for first.

Draw an imaginary line from Alpha through Beta and they'll point you almost directly toward Crux, making them one of the more useful signposts in the southern sky.

Then there's Omega Centauri, one of the most spectacular objects in the entire night sky.

That always helps when you're doing stargazing.

Way down south, we've got the Southern Cross lying on its right-hand side, and the two bright pointer stars are above it.

And if you have really dark skies and you let your eyes adapt to the dark, see if you can spot the dark patch just next to the Southern Cross.

This is a huge cloud of dark dust and gas floating in space called the Coalsack Nebula, and it really does- Will stand out.

If you're out in the middle of nowhere and you've got really dark skies and you let your eyes a- adapt to the dark, then you'll definitely see the Coalsack.

It's like this big black patch next to the Southern Cross.

And you get a telescope onto that and sweep through this nebula, you'll see that there are some stars there between us and this huge nebula, and the nebula's blocking all the stars that are behind.

In the old days, we'll call it the old days when astronomers were still investigating these things, no one really knew whether this big dark patch next to the Southern Cross was a hole, and we were looking all the way through this hole out through a gap in the galaxy out beyond, or whether it was what it has been found to be, a big floating nebula that's blocking the stars from behind, but a few little stars in the foreground.

A little farther out is the more distant Small Magellanic Cloud, which is flanked by a ball of stars, the bright globular cluster NGC 104.

Silhouetted by the band of the Milky Way is the Coalsack Nebula, an obscuring cloud of dust in the constellation Crux, also known as the Southern Cross.

The mosaic also contains many notable stars, such as Alpha Centauri, one of our closest neighboring systems and among the brightest in the sky.

Fomalhaut, which hosts one of the first directly imaged planets.