navelgazing.omphaloskeptic.net Journal

Getting There - Aneel's Travelogue

< Previous: Subtropical | Getting There - Aneel's Travelogue | Next: Around the Rock >

To the rock Yulara, NT, Australia, Friday, 17 June 2011 10:00pm

I think my early rising habit is finally starting to catch up with me. I woke up at 5:30 and had to stall a bit so as to not leave Alice Springs before full light. The drive went pretty quickly, with a stop at Erldunda for gas and at Curtain Springs for lunch. Best burger I've had in Australia. The beet slice was weird, but good.

I passed my second kangaroo crossing warning sign (also seen: camel crossing, jabiru crossing, brolga crossing, airplane crossing) and actually had to honk at a big red kangaroo that was standing around in my lane. It cleared off pretty quickly after the honk.

When I arrived at Yulara, the lodging complex for Uluru (Ayers Rock) , I felt like I needed a nap, but I was only partly successful in actually napping.†In the evening I watched the sun set on Uluru from a distance and listened to a star talk. Some of the southern constellations are now less unfamiliar to me. The means of finding south using the Southern Cross is pretty ridiculous, though. Trace a line along the long axis of the Cross? Find the two pointer stars and trace the line equidistant between them? Where those two cross, drop a altitude? Give me good old Polaris any day. I got to look at Saturn, Antares, and the Moon through telescopes.

So the morning I was leaving Devil's Marbles, I saw the moon and it looked really odd. It had been full or very close at moonrise the night before, but it was a weird crescent and quite orange in the morning. I didn't think a whole lot about it. It turns out that there was an eclipse that I just happened to catch!

Comments

Southern Cross Pa (Anonymously) Saturday, 18 June 2011 9:07pm

Ann Yarmal will be so interested in this! Remember Yuganta published her book The North Star & the Southern Cross!

By the way, would spammers ever admit that they are spamming?

aneel Sunday, 19 June 2011 1:45am

Spammers write scripts to fill in comment forms. Their scripts are not yet smart enough to fill out this sort of question correctly. It's only a matter of time though. I used to have a checkbox and they figured that out.