The Southern Cross. Sketch on a PalmIII. 2000/12/28 6:21am EST

Crux the Southern Cross

I was in Key West and saw the Southern Cross from Boyd's camp. Key West was not an ideal place for star gazing, for the light pollution was bad and the sky was hazy. But it's the south most place I've been to so far ...

The Southern Cross would be highest (but just above the ground) right before dawn. The first day I got up at 6am but it was too cloudy in the south. The second day I got up at 5:50am to see an even cloudier sky. Luckily the clouds drifted away and I immediately saw the upper and left stars of the Southern Cross, very low in the southern sky.

The upper star (gamma) was the brightest with an orange red color; the left one (beta) was slightly dimmer and blue white. The right star (delta) was much dimmer but still visible. However I had to spend quite some time finding the lower star (alpha), which was barely above the horizon (actually above distant tree tops: our camp didn't have a nice view of the sea) and very faint, presumably due to air/haze/cloud absorption. With a pair of binoculars I saw the 4 stars in the same field forming a slightly skewed cross, which was quite impressive. Twilight soon arrived. The third day I got up again at 5:50 and saw the upper three stars of the cross thought clouds, but not the lower one.

During this trip I also saw Omega Centauri as a round fuzzy patch with binoculars (similar to M41 in size, slightly dimmer, smooth, no stellar core), and Canopus the bright white star low in the south with naked eye. Polaris was much lower in Florida than in Pennsylvania.