Use the Southern Cross to find South

The Southern Cross to find South: Star chart showing how to find South in the Southern hemisphere using star groups called the Southern Cross and The Pointers

Where the Northern Hemisphere simply allows you to find the North Star, around which all the stars will rotate, finding your way in the Southern Hemisphere is a little more involved. Unlike in the North, there’s no obvious star due south in the Southern Hemisphere. Instead, you have to use two handy indicators: the Southern Cross — easily spotted, fortunately — and two stars known as The Pointers. Find where these intersect, as in the sketch, and you’ve found due south.

Or, if you prefer, you can follow the direction the Southern Cross is pointing for a distance equal to 4.5x the length of the Southern Cross to arrive at the spot.

Incidentally, I wondered about reliable methods of finding south in the Northern Hemisphere and north in the Southern Hemisphere. And I think the answer is to find north or south and turn around.

Published 7 May 2015

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This is generally the source of much confusion, even amongst those who live over here. If you look carefully at the description of the United Kingdom (on a passport say), you’ll see it’s the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland". So the UK is both of those. Great Britain is the largest island in the British Isles and includes the three countries: England, Scotland and Wales. The British Isles is the group of islands as a whole, including all of Ireland. The British Isles also include several significant islands that are part of Scotland, such as the Hebrides (Inner and Outer), and the Northern Isles of both Orkney and Shetland. It also encloses the Isle of Man, which sits in the Irish Sea between England and Northern Island and is actually a self-governing British Crown Dependency with its own parliament and government. For a little more subtlety, there's the term the British Islands (as opposed to Isles), which includes the UK, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, which sit closer to France. For much further confusion, think for a moment why there’s a UK passport, Great Britain in the Olympic games, and in football, we compete as England, Wales, Scotland and N. Ireland separately. 🤔 Also see: the Union Jack: The making of a flag The Coastline paradox…This is generally the source of much confusion, even amongst those who live over here. If you look carefully at the description of the United Kingdom (on a passport say), you’ll see it’s the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland". So the UK is both of those. Great Britain is the largest island in the British Isles and includes the three countries: England, Scotland and Wales. The British Isles is the group of islands as a whole, including all of Ireland. The British Isles also include several significant islands that are part of Scotland, such as the Hebrides (Inner and Outer), and the Northern Isles of both Orkney and Shetland. It also encloses the Isle of Man, which sits in the Irish Sea between England and Northern Island and is actually a self-governing British Crown Dependency with its own parliament and government. For a little more subtlety, there's the term the British Islands (as opposed to Isles), which includes the UK, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, which sit closer to France. For much further confusion, think for a moment why there’s a UK passport, Great Britain in the Olympic games, and in football, we compete as England, Wales, Scotland and N. Ireland separately. 🤔 Also see: the Union Jack: The making of a flag The Coastline paradox

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