by Andrew Pierce
Our family vacation this year took us to the Jean - Michel Cousteau Fiji Islands Resort on the island of Vanua Levu in Fiji. We were there only a week, the moon was going from third quarter to full, and the weather did not cooperate, but I still saw some memorable astronomical sights.
On our layover in Honolulu the first thing I noticed was how high Mars was. Fiji is about 35 or 40 degrees further south than Hawaii and once we got there it Mars was near the zenith damn near all the time. Or at least from sundown to 10:00.
After arriving, the early evening astro-task on 7-29-01 was to get oriented. Alpha and Beta Cen were fairly high up, unlike Hawaii where they are horizon huggers. A bright cluster overhead turned out to be the tail of Scorpius. Ursa Major was sinking rapidly into Savusavu Bay to the northwest -- only the handle of the dipper was visible. Vega was about 15 degrees above the horizon.
My first binocular object (w/ 15 x 70 binos) was NGC 6231 in Scorp which looked very bright and misty. Soon the Southern Cross appeared out of the clouds. One of the Fijian staff members asked me to show it to him because guests were aways asking about it.
After dinner the first night I checked out M6 M7 and NGC 4755, the Jewel Box in Crux. The latter was multicolored and quite steady in the 6" Mak-Cass I was using as my main instrument.
I decided to look for Proxima Cen using the special chart in SkyAtlas 2000. On the way from Alpha Cen I came across two volunteer clusters, NGC 5617, which was fairly faint and milky looking and Trumpler 22 which could barely be seen in the moonlit cloudy skies. I never was sure I saw Proxima Cen, although there were stars in the area. A better chart or a better night or more aperture is needed.
Next was globular NGC 6397 in Ara, which I had seen before from Hawaii. From Fiji it was very easily resolved, large and did not have much central concentration. A nice object and very good in the binos.
I went out again about 4:00 a.m. to look at a moonless but only briefly clear sky. It cleared only to the south and I couldn't recognize a thing in this unfamiliar region well away from the Milky Way. Still it was nice to enjoy the dark windy humid Fijian night. My full exploration of the far south was yet to come... {See Part 2}.