APOD: Southern Craters and Galaxies (2015 Dec 26)

[APOD Robot]

Southern Craters and Galaxies

Explanation: The Henbury craters in the Northern Territory, Australia, planet Earth, are the scars of an impact over 4,000 years old. When an ancient meteorite fragmented into dozens of pieces, the largest made the 180 meter diameter crater whose weathered walls and floor are lit in the foreground of this southern hemisphere nightscape. The vertical panoramic view follows our magnificent Milky Way galaxy stretching above horizon, its rich central starfields cut by obscuring dust clouds. A glance along the galactic plane also reveals Alpha and Beta Centauri and the stars of the Southern Cross. Captured in the region's spectacular, dark skies, the Small Magellanic Cloud, satellite of the Milky Way, is the bright galaxy to the left. Not the lights of a nearby town, the visible glow on the horizon below it is the Large Magellanic Cloud rising.

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[Boomer12k]

Such a Cool Pic...

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[Djmilt1896@gmail.com]

In the early sixties I mapped the geology of the Henbury craters. Many nights I watched the Milky Way wheeling across the sky.
Thanks for the photo recalling that time.
Dan Milton

[Guest]

I wonder how bright the Milky Way would appear if it were not for the dust clouds

[cindy4444]

What time of day and year was this taken? I wonder how often (during a year) the milky way appears to come straight up from the horizion (facing south?) as it does in this picture.

[Chris Peterson]

What time of day and year was this taken? I wonder how often (during a year) the milky way appears to come straight up from the horizion (facing south?) as it does in this picture.

Well, the Milky Way rotates around the sky every day. This same view occurs every day of the year, so it's just a matter of time of day. Roughly between October and March this view should be visible during hours of darkness (at just before dawn in October, moving to just after sunset in March).

[alter-ego]

What time of day and year was this taken? I wonder how often (during a year) the milky way appears to come straight up from the horizion (facing south?) as it does in this picture.

Well, the Milky Way rotates around the sky every day. This same view occurs every day of the year, so it's just a matter of time of day. Roughly between October and March this view should be visible during hours of darkness (at just before dawn in October, moving to just after sunset in March).

It's actually the other way: Visible in darkness between March and October; just before dawn in March (begin night time viewing) to just after sunset in October (end night time viewing).

[neufer]

<<Henbury is one of the world's best preserved examples of a small crater field. At Henbury there are 13 to 14 craters ranging from 7 to 180 metres in diameter and up to 15 metres in depth that were formed when the meteor broke up before impact. Several tonnes of iron-nickel fragments have been recovered from the site. The site has been dated to ≤4.7 thousand years ago based on the cosmogenic 14C terrestrial age of the meteorite and 4.2±1.9 thousand years ago using fission track dating.

The Henbury crater field is considered a sacred site to the Arrernte people and would have formed during human habitation of the area. J.M. Mitchell said that older Aboriginal people would not camp within a couple of miles of the Henbury craters. An elder Aboriginal man that accompanied Mitchell to the site explained that Aboriginal people would not drink rainwater that collected in the craters, fearing the "fire-devil" would fill them with a piece of iron. The man claimed his paternal grandfather had seen the fire-devil and that he came from the sun. An Aboriginal contact said of the crater field: tjintu waru tjinka yapu tjinka kurdaitcha kuka, which roughly translates in the Luritja language as A fiery devil ran down from the Sun and made his home in the Earth. He will burn and eat any bad blackfellows. This indicates a living memory of the event.

A different story was recorded by Charles Mountford that attributed the largest crater's formation to an anthropomorphic lizard woman (called Mulumura) tossing soil out of the crater, forming its bowl-shape. The soil discarded by Mulumura explained the piles of meteoritic iron around the craters and the presence of ejecta rays (which are unique to terrestrial impacts but are now gone due to prospecting at the site). This probably relates to Dreaming stories about ancestral lizard beings from the area of Henbury station near the Finke River, just north of the crater field.>>

[DavidLeodis]

What time of day and year was this taken? I wonder how often (during a year) the milky way appears to come straight up from the horizion (facing south?) as it does in this picture.

Hi cindy4444.

In the EXIF information that I was able to obtain it stated "Exposure: 77 sec, f/4, ISO 6400. Date: July 11, 2015 6:14:16AM (timezone not specified)".