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What can you see in the night sky?

The Moon

The Moon rises and sets at different times depending on its phase. A Full Moon rises at sunset and sets at sunrise. A New Moon rises and sets with the Sun, which makes it hard to see.

Stars, constellations and asterisms

The sky is divided into 88 regions called constellations. They usually represent animals, mythological characters or man-made objects. Asterisms are star patterns that may or may not be part of one constellation. A popular one is the Big Dipper, which is part of the constellation Ursa Major.

Planets

Five planets are visible with the naked eye: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. They look like bright stars that don't twinkle. You'll find them along the ecliptic, the path the Sun appears to follow over the course of a year.

Nebulae

A nebula is a cloud of gas and dust between the stars, where new stars form. One you can see without a telescope is the Orion Nebula, the middle "star" in Orion's sword.

Meteors, fireballs and bolides

A meteor is the streak of light made when a small piece of space rock (a meteoroid) enters Earth's atmosphere. Fireballs are very bright meteors. A bolide is a fireball that explodes in the atmosphere.

Comets

A comet is an icy body that orbits the Sun. When it gets close to the Sun it heats up and grows a visible atmosphere called a coma, and sometimes a tail.

Star clusters

Star clusters are groups of stars held together by gravity. Open clusters are mostly young stars, and globular clusters are older stars. One you can see with your eyes is the Pleiades (also called the Rosary or the Seven Sisters) in the constellation Taurus.

Galaxies

Galaxies were once called spiral nebulae and were thought to be part of the Milky Way. Now we know the Milky Way is just one of billions of galaxies in the Universe.

The Milky Way

We live in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way, so from a dark site we can see towards its centre. In the Northern Hemisphere it is visible from March to October, and best from April to July.

Large and Small Magellanic Clouds

The Magellanic Clouds are two dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way. They are visible from the Southern Hemisphere.

Artificial satellites

You can see the International Space Station and other satellites from Earth. They look like moving stars, and are easiest to catch shortly after sunset or before sunrise.

Airplanes

Ever seen a moving object in the sky that blinks red and green? That's an airplane.

The North Star

There's a famous star pattern called the Little Dipper, found in the constellation Ursa Minor. At the tip of its handle is Polaris, the North Star. Looking north, the other stars seem to circle around it.

Polaris is the North Star for now because it sits close to where Earth's axis of rotation points. That hasn't always been the case, and it won't always be.

Earth is not a perfect sphere, so the pull of the Sun and the Moon makes its axis wobble like a spinning top. This wobble is called precession.

Because of precession, the star our axis points to slowly changes. About 5,000 years ago, Thuban in the constellation Draco was the north star. In about 14,000 years, it will be Vega in the constellation Lyra. One full circle of precession takes about 26,000 years.

Seasonal skies

Earth revolves around the Sun, and depending on where it is in its orbit, we see different sets of stars at night.

The change is gradual. Stars rise and set about four minutes earlier each night. After 30 days, the same stars set two hours earlier. After a year, we are back where we started (2 hours a month × 12 months = 24 hours).

You might have noticed that you mostly see Orion on chilly December nights. Six months later, in late June, Earth has gone halfway around its orbit and Orion sits in the same direction as the Sun, so we can't see it. Instead we get another beautiful constellation, Scorpius.

The tale of Orion and Scorpius

In Greek myth, Orion was a great hunter. One day he boasted to the goddess Artemis that there was no animal on Earth he could not kill. This made Gaia, the Earth, so furious that she sent a scorpion to kill him.

Their battle ended in Orion's death, and it caught the attention of Zeus, who honoured the scorpion by placing it in the sky. Artemis asked Zeus to honour Orion too, so he placed Orion at the opposite end of the sky. To this day, Scorpius is still chasing Orion across it.

Balatik & Moroporo

Balatik (Orion)

A balatik is a pig trap widely used throughout the archipelago. The stars of Orion, including Orion's belt, trace its shape.

Moroporo (Pleiades)

Moroporo is seen differently in different parts of the country. Some cultures see it as boiling lights, a flock of birds, seven goats, fish scales or flies.

Bubu & Mamahi Uttara

Bubu (Big Dipper)

For the Sama Dilaut of Tawi-Tawi, the Big Dipper is a bubu, a fish trap. They use it to tell whether it is a good time for fishing. Many stars (fish) inside the bubu means they will be able to catch many fish.

They also looked at the rope of the bubu to tell how strong the current would be. When the rope faces west, the current is weak. When it faces east, the current is strong.

Mamahi Uttara (Polaris)

Mamahi Uttara is used by the Sama people for navigation.