The Night Sky

If you're in the southern hemisphere, and you're used to being in the northern hemisphere, you'll be looking at the moon -- and, indeed, anything positioned roughly above the equator -- upside down.

Think about it. From the northern hemisphere, we see the sun, the moon, and constellations above the equator in the southern part of the sky. If you're in the southern hemisphere, however, you'll see them in the northern part of the sky. So if you imagine the moon, in the southern sky, and slide it up so it's in the northern sky, it will appear be upside down.

We saw the moon as we were driving down to Rotorua at night, and it did not look natural at all. Not only was it not oriented correctly, but we couldn't even really figure out how it *should* have been oriented. The craters on the moon didn't seem to match up with the ones I am familiar with. This furthered my suspicion that we were not in New Zealand at all but in a Truman Show-like set designed to deceive us. (The suspicion first arose when we got off the plane in Auckland, and I discovered that we were not, in fact, walking upside down.) Ironically, though his expression was completely different than that which I am accustomed to, "the man in the moon" was so much more identifiable down there. He looked like a big white AIM smiley with a high forehead and -- get this -- fairly symmetrical eyes.

Orion was in the north sky, and he, too, was upside down. Brunnen-G said she never thought about that before, but it's true that whenever you see Orion in the southern hemisphere, he's more or less standing on his head. Betelgeuse is in the lower right instead of the upper left, and his sword hangs up instead of down; Rigel is vice versa. It was neat, but it looked so WRONG.

After we got out of the car at the hotel, I examined the skies further and got a good look at the Southern Cross, which I had never seen before. I also saw Canopus, something like the third brightest star in the sky but not visible from so far north as New Hampshire.