Last day of work before the Christmas holiday - hooray! Even better it's only a half-day. The campus is so abnormally quiet - I was one of only 2 passengers to get off the 99 when it pulled in - but oh so peaceful. The Student Union building (SUB) was empty and everything (except Starbucks) closed. I took a couple of pictures of the empty concourse to see if they would work (they didn't) and then noticed that the seating area under the two partial globes was empty. I thought I'd try and get a picture of the one of the night sky, and I must admit I've never looked at it long enough to try and work out exactly what part of the sky it's showing. I set the camera down on the floor pointing straight up to get this shot. A square crop seemed like the obvious thing to do, and I made it black-and-white because I could not get a colour balance I liked. I'm happy with it: the B&W works quite nicely, and in reality the piece is a silvery-grey.
So what does it show? It's looking at the south celestial pole at stars which cannot be seen from here. Growing up in the northern hemisphere I don't recognize any of the constellations, except for Crux, the Southern Cross, and in trying to identify them I realized that the constellations appeared to be backwards. Then it dawned on me: this partial globe is showing the stars as if you were
outside the Celestial Sphere, whereas star charts and planetarium programs put you in the centre. Mystery solved, but I'm still having a hard time identifying the constellations!
Stars of the southern hemisphere
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