Why does the Southern Hemisphere get the best view of the Milky Way?! | The Galactic Seasons
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- Опубліковано 6 сер 2019
- I am a disgruntled Northern Hemisphere astronomer. Where is my amazing overhead view of the centre of the Milky Way, like what the Southern Hemisphere gets?! It's because nothing lines up nicely in space so we're currently in the middle of the Sun's southern hemisphere galactic summer... but not for "long"!
#milkyway
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My new book 'Space: The 10 Things You Should Know' is coming out September 5th in the UK! You can pre-order it from amazon here (UK only; more details to follow on worldwide release dates): bit.ly/SpaceDrBecky
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My sister made the frame in the background as a present when I passed my PhD. It's not a real certificate. It's a decorative frame in my office which I love. My sister does commissions: megansmethurstdesign.wordpres...
We're moving house soon so I'm hoping to get more prints to decorate the wall in my new office! If you know of any artists that make scientifically accurate or data related art send them my way!
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Dr Becky Smethurst is an astrophysicist researching galaxies and supermassive black holes at Christ Church at the University of Oxford.
drbecky.uk.com - Наука та технологія
100 Thousand years? Ok, I'll set my alarm. I live in the northern hemisphere and do not want to miss this because I fell asleep
Dr Becky, make sure you look at the Plate tectonics calculators, Your house may be in the southern hemisphere when the northern is pointing to Sagittarius. I'd hate for you to wait all that time and still not be able to see it from your house.
That would suck
Yeah, that would be typical.
More like 5 billion years, plenty time, relax.
Good thinking bro 😂. That would suck
It wouldn't realy matter around the time of "galactic equinox". Because then the axis of rotation would roughly make a 90 degree angle with the galactic plane (ignoring the tilt that is "vertical" to the plane as it would be irrelevant). As a consequnce one would have about half a year of the nucleus, and half a year of the outer rim (except at the poles, people there would get the "inbetweens"). And I say "roughly" because of the Earth's precession and the other quirky movement.
And if Becky is super unlucky then the western tip of the Eurasian plate would migrate to the North pole during the galactic equinox and continue moving towards the Americas. Then it's another hundred million years of waiting.
Bummer...
I hope I got the explanation through. It's difficult without the visuals.
We in the southern hemisphere are also closer to Alpha Centauri.
That means we get a headstart (when eventually going there) of about 5000 km out of 45 trillion km! TAKE THAT!
Oh yeah? We in the north are closer to Andromeda Galaxy (i think...?).
You will never beat us in a race there!
the truth of this claim DEPENDS on the 'season'.
please no
@@miwoj oh yeah?
We're closer to the small and large magellanic clouds. TAKE THAT
@@miwoj we can see Andromeda but you can never see small or large megellanic cloud nebula. We in the southern hemisphere have the Best view of Jupiter, Saturn, the milk way, Orion & Scopius constellations , Sirius, Canopus & Alpha Centuri, the three brightest stars in the night skies. You can never beat us
This video makes me want to visit the southern hemisphere just to see the southern sky.
HA!
Thanks for that explanation. I grew up in Southern Africa, returning to the the UK as an adult. Trying to explain the skys of the deep bush of Botswana at night to friends has been like explaining what chocolate is to someone who has never tasted sugar.
Now at last I have a reason. I never realised the solar system had such a tilt with regards to the galactic core.
@RDE Lutherie , that was simply a very short simile so I didn't prattle on for to long.
I'm a frequent user of links and pictures, but there is a very definite difference in watching an event on a computer screen and witnessing or living through the real thing. The experience of a live rock festival is quite different to watching UA-cam clips, thunderously so, both of which I do.
What this clip has given me is a logical and explainable reason why there is a literal carpet of stars seen from the African bush [not farms, but out there where you carry your own water, at least 100km away from even the nearest road] - without fail, anyone I've take out from cities even from SA has had their breath taken away, its really funny to watch them.
You are not going to get that from even a hi-spec movie theater.
To describe that to someone without sounding like a "I-know-it-all-I'm-a-hotshot-seen-everything" is quite a task. Now at least I have a reason why the African night sky is so majestically different to the view from an English farm.
Note: I'm sure South America, Australia, and New Zealand are similar. I've just never lived there so cannot in truth comment.
@@damien6685 the huge difference is probably more to blame on light polution. The sky is actually different but you can see the milky way very clear in the northern hemisphere if you find the right spot.
@@ryanvess6162 "if you find the right spot."
Years ago I had to stop in the middle of nowhere and wait for my car to cool down.
Besides being in the middle of nowhere (Nevada, U.S.A.) it was also the middle of the night. I was blown away by the view of the Milky Way.
While we can get amazing views of the stars in the norther hemisphere, I've heard from multiple people (including Dr. Becky) the southern hemisphere's sky is much more dramatic.
Thanks for sharing your experience with us Damien Lagan. It really makes me want to travel to the good viewing spot down south sometime.
The most awesome place to see the clear night sky in Southern Africa is up in the Drakensberg mountains. The Sky looks like some one has taken a bag of sugar and thrown it onto a freshly black painted ceiling.
RDE Lutherie I’m gonna disagree with regards to “the better the chocolate the less sugar there is”. I’ve tasted pure unadulterated chocolate and I can personally attest that without any sugar (by extension of that logic, the best chocolate there could be) chocolate is so overpoweringly bitter as to be downright awful. As with all things, it is much more about moderation than either extreme! By the OP’s point stands, it is very difficult to describe anything to another person if you have no common point of reference to help further that description. It’s like describing color to someone who has been 100% blind (no vision whatsoever) from birth, they don’t even have a concept of what light is, much less the effects that different wavelengths of light, or color, create and the emotions they further. We can communicate some aspects to them, but so much is simply beyond description. That’s part of the reason why many who were born entirely blind, or even regain sight after many years, or deaf tend to cry upon first exposure to such sights or sounds as the experience is entirely overwhelming to them since they have either never experienced the phenomena or have not done so in many years.
I do really appreciate the Winter skies in Australia. Long, cold nights staring into the galactic centre as it wheels overhead. Scorpio and Sagittarius is all their glory. Summer nights give us a great view of the Magellanic Clouds.
I envy the SH skies for all those reasons, being here in the States. Tho, it would take some getting used to seeing the moon and constellations upside down with respect to here.
Alright, you don't have to rub it in!
@@ruthmckay9086 If I were to rub it in, I would certainly have given Omega Centauri some prominence. It is far and away the most spectacular globular cluster in the sky. Be truly grateful for your view of the Andromeda Galaxy. A sight that I've only seen a few times.
@@peterskye7825 Problem is, Andromeda just looks like another star, or at best a tiny grey smudge, even at no light pollution. The entire extent of the galaxy, which is said to span a huge 10 times the diameter of the full moon, is unfortunately too dim to be visible with the naked eye.
@@peterskye7825 Compare that to the Milky Way, entirely visible with the naked eye. I've seen it a few times here in the northern hemisphere, considering how visible it was I'll imagine down south it'll be so bright it casts shadows, albeit not as colorful as in the photographs.
Although I admire your patience you might just look into a plane ticket.
LOLL
Waiting 100,000 years Beats dealing with the crowds, traffic, and security checks at the airport.
100,000,000 years
Arrgghh Watch to the end of the video, will ya?
@Prince Bumpkin, And you could do so even if you walked.
Mind blown. Never knew that we orbit the sun at a 60° angle relative to the Milky Way. So immediately angular momentum was my question. ☑️ Answered
I never knew that either. My mind is blown as well
I didn't know the exact angle, but it makes sense since the galaxy's center cuts across our sky at a far steeper angle than the planets and sun do (at least from Illinois).
@@Kharnellius The Illinois angle is based on a regional concession made by the Night Sky Secretariat at the treaty of Rockford in 1804. Kidding of course - as you correctly assume the planetary / galactic offset angle doesn't vary with latitude whereas both their apparent elevations do.
I’m on holiday when this video goes live so I probably won’t be online to respond to the first comments and questions like I usually do. It’d be great to come back home to a flurry of science questions on any topic in space that I could make future videos on. I know you all have those burning space questions so comment away!
P.S. Oops holiday fried my brain - accidentally scheduled for next Wednesday - sorry this is later than usual!
Simple solution. Move to Australia the English are welcome.
@@leighmoom5277 - hehe, yes she should move to Brisbane.
At the risk of taking away your grand plan to catch this view in a little less than 100K years, wouldn't Precession as well as Plate Tectonics impact your viewing-area by then?
There was a headline about a rather new super massive blackhole, not sure if you have covered it or not, News articles lack great science reporting. If you have just point to that video. Thanks. Love your end of video humorous bits.
Anton Petrov reports about Polish astronomers' paper on the shape of the Milky Way -- it's not a real plane. ua-cam.com/video/jGe4GfO7FC0/v-deo.html
In July 1974 my father and I were visiting an uncle who lived about 30 miles west of Montevideo, Uruguay. I remember walking down to the beach on a moonless night. The sky was the darkest that I have ever seen. Every few seconds I would see a meteor and spread across the sky was The Milky Way. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds were clearly visible. Wow!
I get good views of the Milky way where I live in Australia, I live in a country town, so a few kilometers out of town on a moonless night and it looks amazing.
You have got to look out across a glassy dead calm shore up into a clear sky, a crescent moon hung low above the city limit lights on the horizon, far away, and clearly see the inky Coal Sack contrast itself against space, to the naked eye appears the diffuse whiteness of the Lesser and Greater Magellanic Clouds. Gape at the transformed sky, stars swollen in their natural size, above still waters beneath a night sky.
You have got to look out across a glassy dead calm shore up into a clear sky, a crescent moon hung low above the city limit lights on the horizon, far away, and make out the inky Coal Sack darkness contrast itself against space. To the naked eye much smaller appears the diffuse whiteness of the Lesser and Greater Magellanic Clouds. Gape at the transformed sky, stars swollen in their natural size, above still waters beneath a night sky.
In 1986 I went on an observing trip with a group to Peru (way up in the Andes) to see Halley's Comet. The comet was fairly impressive but the BIG WOW was the view of the southern sky!! The skies were so dark you could look up an see the color of individual stars with the naked eye! Like brilliant diamonds! And I was astounded when I looked up and saw the LMC....and then saw the SMC....it felt like I could reach up and touch another galaxy!! It was so dark that no matter how long we were out there our eyes sever adjusted to the dark enough so that we could see the person standing next to us (I was holding on to my girlfriend but could not see her face!!) . Becky, really you need to get your butt down there. But be careful, it is dangerous down there, we had guards with machineguns traveling with us.....no joke!! Tony
I'm from South Africa, the views of the night sky when you are in an area away from light pollution will leave you in awe
Hahaha Bless you! The sneeze at the end got me! Please keep these outtakes in your videos! 😂
Go and live in Patagonia! I was there and the Milky Way was amazing! It was like somebody had painted the sky with white paint. There are no towns to cause light pollution for thousands of kilometers.
When I went to Zimbabwe I saw the Milky Way it was life changing
I live in Houston TX USA. You can hardly see Venus! The light pollution is horrible!
Sometimes even the sun is obscured!
Houston is the definition of sprawl. I was there in 97 and it was bad then. I can only imagine what ya'll have built now.
I've traveled to the Southern Hemisphere many times and really enjoyed seeing the Southern Cross and Alpha Centauri (nearest star system to our sun),
So glad i live in the southern hemisphere. Couldn't imagine not looking at the stars and not seeing the milky way in all its glory
Loved your video! I live in the southern hemisphere, and right now, the milky way core is beautiful in the sky. Our doors are open to everyone that may wanna see it from the south! :D Cheers from Lima, Perú!
Dr. Becky has a knack for making videos about things I wanted to know about but didn’t know where to look. I always wondered whether we were looking towards the center of the galaxy or towards the outer edge.
I live in the southern hemisphere. My frustration is not being able to see the Andromeda galaxy easily.
If you wait about 5 billion years our two galaxies will collide offering a great view.
@@michaelproctor8100 I actually think Andromeda is a reflexion of our own galaxy, by a fucking huge mirror-like thing out there
@@rafaelzengo5534 Haven't heard that one before. Interesting.
Drunken Sailor, my favorite obscure classical song!!
ua-cam.com/video/xby7cH3kl6M/v-deo.html
I saw the Milky Way while camping outside in Florida in Oceola National Park. It was around 2am. The most amazing beautiful thing I've ever seen and I will never forget it.
I admire your teaching skills. I'm always watching documentaries on astronomy but you're the only one to explain this concept of solar system tilt of 60 degrees with respect to galactic plane 👍
Just a suggestion, a professional sabbatical to the University of Canterbury Mount John Observatory in New Zealand may scratch that itch.
I live in Southern Chile. There's a lot of interest in an astronomy party here. If you want come on down!
6:17: She said " the sun's southern hemisphere galactic summer!!! "... wow, what a mouthful... & it does make sense cos that's that Becky ... Dr.Becky...
That is one of the best chart's ever. Thank you for describing my location in the galaxy!
_Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars;_
_It's a hundred thousand light-years side to side;_
_It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light-years thick,_
_But out by us it's just three thousand light-years wide._
_We're thirty thousand light-years from Galactic Central Point,_
_We go 'round every two hundred million years;_
_And our galaxy itself is one of millions of billions_
_In this amazing and expanding universe._
You put the words right in my mouth.
Translation: that's what I was thinking, but you explained it so much better than I could.
WOW I had no idea the ecliptic was so far out of alignment from the rim... thrilling! This explains so much!
With precession of the equinoxes, Sagittarius will be the northern hemisphere summer solstice in only 12500 years or so. The pole will fully precess about 4 times by time you get to 100000 AD... so, the Earth's axial tilt wobble will give us in the northern hemisphere a better view much sooner...😁
Spot on 😉
06:00 [Just to be pedantic] The Sun translates around the galaxy on the other direction.
You're amazing! Thank you for putting your thoughts into this and deciding to make and share a video about it. I've been searching for an explanation to this exact question for days and apparently you're the only one who has a tube for it, and luckily YOU made it coz i couldn't wish for a better explanation. Thank you thank you!
That first wee bit of song at the end made me melt. Lovely 🌹 healing tuning
2:38 Damn, the SCP foundation has already found an object on south pole
Looking for a comment like this
Neil deGrasse Tyson claims to be everyone's personal astronomer (sorry... Astrophysicist)... I vote Dr. Becky to take over.
To my knowledge, Neil deGrasse Tyson doesn't claim to be an astronomer. He's an astrophysicist.
ua-cam.com/video/gD1rxPaoWZw/v-deo.html
I don't much care for him. He comes off as a bit too condescending and puffed up for my tastes.
Brian M. Ross especially as he’s sometimes such an arse about other topics.
Im cool with this i just recently got into watching things with the series the universe i always knew who neil degrass tyson was and one his quotes goes something along the lines of we live in an age where more people know serial killer names then scientist and i heard that quote a long time ago................that quote actually started making me take notice of peoples names when they do things..............i dont like how serial killers inately get movies after them right but scientist get documentares were starting to push away from that thou and youtube allows everyone to have a platform its awesome....................michu kaku was another of my favorites cause he also likes to ponderize sci fi and everything science fiction tends to be what encourages new generations or science itself i feel there should be more emphazies on the news about things like this i grew up in cali right high speed chases north hollywood shoot out tanks guy cutting off an over pass with a big ass sign saying hmos are in it for the money pop shooting at everyone with a rifle and eventually blows his head off like yeah its news yeah it gets views and ratings.......................but i also saw all this during kids programing and i mean dont get me wrong i feel that should be on the news like the kill dozer thing but if we have more of an emphazise on good news thou it might stop to encourage it honestly im glad i grew up with that and watched it and knew about it early on i already had that pretty much ingrained in my head at an early age with my neighbor but some generations of people look at it in the wrong way i feel youtube is helping those that want to learn and are interested in things do more thou.......................im glad youtubes taking off and im glad 5g and elon musk new satelights are going up in space and more people are gonna be connected then ever befor this is how we advanced a collective think tank now if we can just stray away from the racial or hate or trolls and fuckery ohhhh what a world it would be.......................
Sorry i love Neil also!
Thank you for including the sneeze. That made my day.
Great video as always, love the outtakes at the end and I now have a new way of singing drunkin sailor
An alternative plan would be to come to live in the Southern Hemisphere. There are quite a few nice telescopes and Universities in the southern hemisphere.
I went on Holiday to Karijini National Park (Western Australia) in late May and early June and the desert sky at night was amazing.
I never knew the Sun was tilted with respect to the galaxy. Thanks.
In 1990 I moved from Canada to Australia. While there I found myself spending a month travelling through the Western Desert. Every night the sky was an extraordinary light show with the centre of the galaxy stretching from horizon to horizon. I could see colours in the sky I had never seen before. It was incredible.
Well done Becky, cant wait for the next week episode
The editing and animations in this video were top notch! Really put the point across. Thanks for your quality content put out in an awesome way!
250m years to orbit, Sun about 4.6B years. So our sun is 18 galactic years old.
18 'months'? It takes one full orbital completion around its point of gravitation (i.e., the galactic core) before the Sun can lay claim to its first birthday. It still has quite a ways to go for that special day.
@@jaybingham3711 No, Egg was right. It takes about 250 million years to go around the galaxy and the sun is about 4.6 billion years old. 4.6 billion divided by 250 million gives you 18.4 revolutions around the galaxy since the sun was born making the sun about 18.4 galactic years old.
Great, it's ok to call the Sun hot without being creepy.
@@dsa3df3 4.6 billion divided by 250 million is 18.4, and 0.4 times 250 million is 100 million. If you called the sun hot more than 100 million years ago you're being creepy.
Easily the most patient person ever.
Always knew Dr. Becky is way ahead of her time 🥳
Thank you. I have been looking for this information for a while now.
I mean, you'll be waiting almost as long for James Webb so you might as well stick it out.
😂
😢
LOL
The "Credit: R Smethurst" made me giggle :)
Classic sneeze…love this and thank you!
Lovely explanation Dr Becky ! !
Just ask Brady for a ticket to Australia :)
Flat Earthers are like whats a hemisphere? lol
This comment deserves accolades 🤣
A hoax
@@Rpesca76 You can hoax an entire hemisphere? Now that is clever!
Its like a dome
@@flatearth5821 And? What does something being like something else have to do with this. Thank god that flat earth is dying out now. The madness is over.
Enjoyed the video especially the footage at the end, thanks. And to the people taking into account plate tectonics, good point.
Excellent, clear presentation, many thanks!
I'm willing to wait 250Ma. Idk about you, but I'd have no issue with being immortal.
Andreas Aristokrates The problem is, that you will totally forget about it, and only remember it 350 million years from now. Ops, I missed it, maybe next time...
You're a jerk, Dent. - Wowbagger
Oh, trust me. Once you've been floating in empty space for a 100 billion years, you'll wish you weren't immortal.
@Prince Bumpkin obviously meat isn't quite cutting it, although I'd love a biological solution for immortality, I fully expect that this fake immortality will rely on merging the brain with a tech brain. No copy magic, some brain plasticity magic instead, slowly shifting from the dying body into the machine.
Honestly, I just want to know how it ends and just sleeping until "then", as if the end was discrete, feels like straight suicide. I want to see how it all plays out, us, ai, aliens, science, I want to know the point of stuck. Maybe then logarithmic backoff sleeping would be appropriate.
I can be reasonably hopefull, that my curiosity would always keep me from falling asleep forever, unless I loose all humanity and apply "the only winning move is not to play", at which point I would consider it death anyway. The kind when people pull the plug.
Check out Anton Petrov's channel. He uses a nice piece of software, Universe Sandbox 2
Hello Wonderful Person!! Love the way he explain the universe.
Thank you so much Dr Becky for such a concise and elegant explanation. I feel my knowledge of the planet on which I live has been expanded enormously.
One of the first things, I remember from my childhood (age 5 or so), is, my parents showing me, the Milky Way in the night sky... I never knew the intricacies of those angles of tilt.
07:15 In a few years we will get VERY DETAILED & _precise_ astrometrics in "6D" (the standard 3D for the "current positions" of stars, plus each of the 3 axis of their movements relative to the center of the galaxy).
-> Only then this computer programs will be able to show a _realistic_ sky over 1 millon years.
You could just move to New Zealand. That's a lot quicker I think. It's not mandatory to stay in Britain.
Moving to New Zealand, that sounds like a very high level of commitment... Maybe, once the inevitable WW3 starts, I will have to look into this matter, since New Zealand is on no map, it can't be nuked.
@William White Why would you say that? Have you ever been to New Zealand?
@William White yeah sure one of the naturally most stunning places on earth with some of the best climate there is ... sounds hella boring to live in a place with great nature and outdoors activities.
@William White ah ok now I get it youre one of those people :D
I'd gladly move to N.Z. Not only does it have the best view of the Southern Hemisphere night sky, it also has a good temperate climate and doesn't get too hot.
Dr Becky thank you so much for the explanation. I was always dumbfounded by the way the galactic plain appeared in the sky.
It's a trade off- We have a much easier polar alignment, they have the better view! Clear Skies!
That sneeze made me subscribe finally. Too cute :)
Too bad a female scientist has to sneeze cutely in order to get subscribed to. Appreciate the excellent content for fck sake!!
I disliked because it shoulda been cut out😒
@@rolandmdill :D I appreciate the content, I watched most of her videos but wasn't subbed before. Doesn't matter much, YT seems to "shadow sub" channels you like to watch.
@@zka77 This is not about how you got to watch the video in the first place. It is about how female scientists have to fight constantly in order to get the male audience to focus attention to their work. Would you also compliment male scientists like Mike Merrifield or Ed Copeland on their cuteness?
It's confirmed: Dr. Becky is planning to become a vampire!
Excellent explanation Dr B.
Absolutely beautiful explanation of Milky Way dynamics! ⭐️❤️
Or you could move to Australia or New Zealand. That should take less than 97,000 years, right?
97,000 seconds make more sense.
Wait a minute; you say there's a Southern Hemisphere? The flat earthers aren't going to like hearing this. :O)
Southern "surface." ;-)
Yea but they have an inferiority complex, and the core sits higher in their sky so they like to say the view is objectively more magnificent. The only advantage is for high res astronomy calculations. To the human eye, neither hemisphere has a "better view".
you have a beautiful singing voice and your endings in each of your videos are great!
Outstanding explanation! As a photographer, I have always wondered why parts of our tiny little sphere can't see something as big and far away (last time I checked) as our galactic core. This now makes complete sense to me, and thank you for making this video.
Brilliant video. Again. Knowledge alone doesn't do that. Your didactic skills are what brings the quality to your videos. Love it. And you 😘. And the bloopers
So well explained, Dr Becky!
Awesome. All hope is not lost
I live in the Midwest of America. Any time I want to see the center I just break it in half, be sure to remove wrapper first.
Great video Dr. Becky, have a nice holiday.
Hahaha i love the last few mins of your videos. Showing you making mistakes or messing around. And damn i love your singing voice
This was really fun. I've wondered for years about the relative rotations of the galaxy, solar system and earth-moon. Thanks for a really enjoyable video.
Why? Because we're awesome that's why!
Regional South Aussie here, on a crisp clear winters night grab a swag go outside away from any lights and lay down and look up, you can see straight into the galactic centre, and it's breath taking.
Great vid Dr
Thank you so much for the explanation! Love it!
Thank you for the great explanation Dr Becky. You have been crowned Star Doctor.
the end of that video was adorable
8:35 Bless You, Dr. Becky !
Amazing video. Thank you for the education!!!
Another great video...and we all loved the sneeze :)
8:35 first time I have ever seen a sneezing outtake. This is the reason why I'm subbed.
This is mind blowing.
Hooray and up she rises....
Nicely done Becky:)
Thanks for the great introduction into how complex Earth's movement is inside the Milky Way!
I've been wanting to build a little desktop gizmo that always points to the center of the Milky Way. This video has provided some useful insights! Thanks Dr. Becky!!
Thanks for the explanation on the tilts of the orbital plans. I always thought is was that explanation but never knew the exact degree of the tilt and the time frame of the solar orbit around the galaxy.
Oh, by the way; the little "out takes" at the end of the video, they are nice and bring a little smile. Keep up the good work.
Don't know about the "drunken astronomer" but I could listen to you say "at all" all day. It just puts a smile on my face.
Always love your videos! Thanks for sharing
Wow...amazing...
Bless you:)
I like the way you explain things. Very plain. Thank you. I really enjoyed this episode.
Well done!