This also heralded the southern hemisphere’s spring season. The navigator predicted that they were in the lee of a low lying atoll 15-minutes later, tops of coconut trees were sighted.įall in the northern hemisphere began on September 22, when the sun crossed the equator in a biannual event, the equinox. Once on a voyage, a navigator noticed that the canoe’s bow had dried up and they were no longer experiencing that chronic splash across the front deck. The seas become more quiet and the swells are more sorted and easier to read. On the downwind side of atolls, the ocean loses some of its intensity as it wraps around the island. Large towering cumulus clouds above the interior lagoons of atolls will absorb the blue-green reflection of the trapped ocean below it. Normally, they would indicate land in the upwind direction of where the debris is drifting from. Natural debris from islands such as coconuts, driftwood, and palm leaves are also signs of land. It is more important to pay attention to groups of the right species rather than the solitary land bird. One must be cautious of juveniles and young adults with no chicks to feed, they can wander far from land. Land birds with young nestlings to feed will fly out to fishing grounds in the early morning and return to the island later in the day. The Noio, Noddy Tern, has a range of about 40 miles from land. The Manu-O-Ku, White Tern, has a range of 120 miles from land. The best indicator of outlying atolls are land birds. For sailing canoes, the regular landfall is the western edge of the Tuamotu screen, Mataiva, Tikehau, Rangiroa, and Arutua.ħ2-hours before you see the tops of coconut trees on the northern facing shoreline, clues indicating that land is just beyond the horizon should be visible. Pointing the canoe’s bow close to the direction of Manu Malanai, southeast on the Hawaiian star compass, you would keep the canoe on a windward heading until you make landfall. The best strategy to arrive in the Tuamotu Archipelago is to leave from the easternmost point of the Hawaiian islands, Hilo. These atolls form a screen of islands that stretch about 500 miles from east to west. When Holopuni and Hōkūmau are no longer visible, because they have faded into the northern horizon and are being obscured by the clouds, you should be approaching the Tuamotu Archipelago, a ban of 78 low lying coral atolls. At the equator, when crossing the meridian, they attain an altitude of 16˚ (Holopuni) and 18˚ (Hōkūmau) in height above the northern point on the horizon.Īs you sail south from the equator, Holopuni and Hōkūmau will get closer and closer to the horizon, losing a degree of altitude for every 60 nautical miles you travel south. When Holopuni and Hōkūmau make their nightly east to west journey across the night sky, they will travel across the celestial meridian, an imaginary line that runs from the celestial north pole through to the celestial south pole. Virgo - the maiden, very low in the west is the second largest constellation in the sky and one of the two in which the ecliptic and celestial equator cross. This one marks the current position of the September equinox. It is home to a cluster of galaxies of which M87 is the largest at around 60 million light years with a central black hole at least 7 billion times the mass of the Sun. It has one bright star, the 16th brightest in the night sky, Spica which is about 250 light years away. Like most stars, it is a binary.The twin stars in the bucket of the Little Dipper, Holopuni, Kochab, and Hōkūmau, Pherkad are good clues for determining latitude in the southern hemisphere. What's in the sky this September? ConstellationsĬonstellations represent groups of stars that have been given a name and more recently, a border. For millennia they have been used as a tool to share significant cultural stories, events and as markers. Today, the 88 western constellations that trace their roots to the ancient middle east are used here help astronomers map the sky and search for astronomical objects. This September these constellations dominate the spring sky: Monthly sky maps from the 2021 Australasian Sky Guide published by MAAS Media.