After 6 months on the southern hemisphere, I finally made it to a planetarium…. What I wanted to do already in the first week, but scrapped because of language issues, children’s programs of some comic figures hopping on the moon, renovations or the usual I’ll do that tomorrow….

It was worth it. We had a presentation of the summer sky in Auckland at around 9pm. I learned about some of the most visible constellations (under city light conditions) and how to find a couple of the most prominent stars.

We looked at Orion, upside down, and how to find his two dogs that accompany him in his hunt, finding Sirius (the brightest star in the sky) in the process, and Aldebaran in Taurus, as well as Castor and Pollux in Gemini.

Orion is hunting the Pleiades, which Taurus is trying to protect. The Pleiades, or Matariki in Māori, are one of the most well known constellations in the skies.

For the Māori, the reappearance of Matariki signals the beginning of the new year in late may or early june, and give also the name to the spring season.

I finally know how to find α Centauri, the closest star to our sun that is visible to the naked eye.

The closest is actually Proxima Centauri at 4.2 light years, but it’s so dim you can’t see it.

Together with β Centauri you can make out the Southern Cross, that adorns the flags of my host countries Brazil, Australia and New Zealand, that’s why both are also called the Pointers.

I had managed to identify the Southern Cross already on my last days in Melbourne, when my friend Kieran helped me find it – it’ll always make me think of Melbourne and the Abbotsford Convent!

I also learned how to identify South. Lacking a Polar Star like the northern hemisphere, you can identify South by looking up another prominent star, Achernar, also called α Eridani in the Eridanus constellation.

It’s the 10th brightest star in the sky and easy to find. Halfway between the Cross and α Eridani drop down to the horizon. That’s due South.

Now why would I ever need that, owner of a smartphone? Well, you never know where you end up.

And this is just one of the methods how people like the Māori navigated the sea, by the stars, constellations, winds, currents, cloud formations over islands, waves and birds.

I also learned that we are so far South that some stars never set here. They rotate around the southern Celestial Pole. The Southern Cross for example, this is why it will point in all possible directions throughout the year.

I was always fascinated by the stars, it is probably the longest running interest I have, since I was little. I had numerous books on the universe, constellations, the planets, and, a bit later, the current theories about what holds it all together. (A must-read: Stephen Hawking’s A brief history of time).

I even had a proper, albeit small telescope, but never really learned to use it to find stars – I might have been too young for it. But I looked at the Moon, its craters, Venus…

Still today, the sky is the most fascinating thing to me. Driving through the California wilderness I asked friends to stop the car many times, to enjoy ten minutes in the dark with the most amazing skies above me.

I’ve spent hours outside looking up in the Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks, the places in the continental USA most remote from any city, counting shooting stars.

I drove 200 miles up the Florida coast from Miami to Cape Canaveral in the hope to witness one of the last Space Shuttle missions (only to find it had been postponed due to weather conditions…)

I was so disappointed in the winter of 1985/86, when Halley’s comet made its return, but I could not see it then.

It was at its brightest on the Southern hemisphere, and viewing conditions were bad in general as the Earth was on the opposite side of its orbit.

But I have another chance in 2061, when it is likely to return, if its orbit is not too much disturbed by Jupiter…

One of my favorite writers, Mark Twain, was born on 30 November 1835, exactly two weeks after the comet’s closest approach to the sun. He said:

I came in with Halley’s comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.’

Twain died on 21 April 1910, the day following the comet’s closest approach to the sun.

The next predicted approach of Halley’s Comet is 28 July 2061. I’ll be around.

PS: for the record, I haven’t smoked anything. I just get carried away by it…