June 21 – Why is the sun in the wrong place?

            Matt and I joined the Wellington Astronomical Society because we love learning about astronomy, and we want to learn about astrophotography.  After the last meeting, we were chatting with a woman who, when she found out we were from the U.S., asked if we thought it odd that we could not see the north star?  I had not thought about it really, but she explained that she had learned to navigate her boat by using the stars and wondered if we knew where to look.

            I did not have the heart to tell her that I can’t tell my right from my left let alone trying to figure out where north is using stars.  Then she said something that really blew our minds.  She asked us how we felt with the sun being in the north.  I had no idea what she was talking about.  But Matt had come home one day and said he did not understand why the sun is in the wrong place.  It did not look right to him.  

            She explained to us that in the Southern Hemisphere, the sun crosses the sky in the north, and it goes from right to left.  My response?  I turned into Bill & Ted–No way!  Yes way!  Think about this.  You folks up there in the Northern Hemisphere–find the southern exposure of your house.  you know that on the south side of the house, the sun shines all day.  In addition, the sun rises to your left and crosses along the south to the west which is on the right.

            Here in the Southern Hemisphere, the sun does the opposite.  It is the north side of the house that has the sun all day and the sun travels from right to left.  There is an explanation as to why this happens.  I found several websites on the subject, but I did not understand it and certainly cannot sum it up.  (I admit I am not the smartest when it comes to math.)  

            This then raised in my mind the simple question, does that mean the moss grows on the south side of a tree? The answer is yes, the moss grows on the south side of the tree.  

            As for the rest of the sky, we will have to get used to the different constellations.  There is no Little Dipper here but there are many more significant stars to see, and much more of the universe is visible from the Southern Hemisphere—the Milky Way, plus other galaxies, a few nebula are all fairly visible in a dark sky.  We will certainly spend a lot of time getting to know that sky.