What Sailing Route Is The Southern Cross?

The Southern Cross, a constellation used by sailors since the 15th century, is a popular choice for cruising the South Pacific. The song was written by Stills Nash and highlights the importance of consistent speed and not having downtime during crossings. The song suggests that sailing around Iceland and the Faroe Islands at the end of July and beginning of August is the optimum timing with minimal threat of gales.

The initial stage of navigating Iceland presents challenges due to light winds and opposite currents in the Gulf of Panama. It is advisable to head slightly east of south. The song also details a boat trip Stills took after getting divorced and charts out a path from California to the South Pacific known as the Coconut Milk Run. This path sails from the Southern Islands in Polynesia to Papeete and the Marquesas Islands by Tahiti and ends up in Avalon, California.

The Southern Cross is the only directional equivalent of the north star visible in the southern hemisphere. Sailors use the Southern Cross to help navigate their boats, and sailing on the inside would be the more protected route. At 35 degrees south latitude and all latitudes farther south, sailors can see the Southern Cross all night, all year round.

Sailing a reach involves sailing to the south south-west, across mostly easterly winds, to catch the trades and sail downhill. Aruba is the first destination on a cruise, and it is far enough south to conjure up the location of the Southern Cross.

What religion is the Southern Cross?

The Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross is a personal ordinariate of the Roman Catholic Church primarily within the territory of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference for groups of Anglicans who desire full communion with the Catholic Church in Australia and Asia.

The Knights of the Southern Cross (KSC) is a Catholic fraternal order throughout Australia.

In India, there is a story related to the creation of Trishanku Swarga (त्रिशंकु), meaning Cross (Crux), created by Sage Vishwamitra.

What is the maritime Southern Cross?

• The national flags of Australia and New Zealand include versions of the Southern Cross.
• David Crosby, the Crosby to Stills & Nash, has been a sailor since age 11.

Throwing it back to 1982, check out the video for Southern Cross, featuring Stephen Stills in action at the helm:

How far north can you see the Southern Cross?

Bottom line: The Southern Cross can be seen from the Northern Hemisphere, as long as you’re below 26 degrees north and know when and where to look!

About the Author:. Bruce McClure served as lead writer for EarthSky’s popular Tonight pages from 2004 to 2021, when he opted for a much-deserved retirement. He’s a sundial aficionado, whose love for the heavens has taken him to Lake Titicaca in Bolivia and sailing in the North Atlantic, where he earned his celestial navigation certificate through the School of Ocean Sailing and Navigation. He also wrote and hosted public astronomy programs and planetarium programs in and around his home in upstate New York.

What is the myth behind the Southern Cross?

MythologyAmong stories of indigenous Australian star lore, the Southern Cross depicts a possum hiding in a tree. For the Tainui Māori of New Zealand, it represents Te Punga, the anchor of a great sky canoe. For Wairarapa Māori, the Southern Cross is Māhutonga, an opening for storm winds to escape through the Milky Way. The ancient Greeks were aware of the cross/kite-shaped asterism and regarded it as part of the constellation Centaurus. As a navigational guide for Christian European mariners making their first forays into the Southern Hemisphere, the star pattern took on another significance in the 15th and 16th centuries. Crux was formally named in the 17th century.

Interesting objectsFor such a small constellation, the area is rich in deep-sky objects owing to its position, superimposed on a particularly bright section of the Milky Way — except, that is, for a nearby prominent naked-eye ‘void’ that is commonly referred to as the Coal Sack, or Coalsack Nebula. This is the most prominent dark nebula in the sky, a vast molecular cloud some 600 light-years from Earth dimming the light of the more distant Milky Way stars.

Some 320 light-years from the Sun, Acrux is not only the 14th brightest star in the sky and the most southerly first-magnitude star, it is also a beautiful triple star in small telescopes. Binoculars will reveal the wide fifth-magnitude component, while small telescopes can split the magnitude 1.4 and 2.1 components some 4arcseconds apart.

Why is the Southern Cross sideways?

Orientation. The orientation and position of the cross in the sky are constantly changing. It appears to rotate around a point in space known as the South Celestial Pole (it is in fact the earth that is rotating). During the night the orientation of the constellation changes in a regular manner from upright, to lying sideways, to upside-down. Both its position and orientation change over the course of a year. At midnight on 1 April it is upright and high in the sky, but three months later it is lying on its side in the south-west. It will be found upside-down and low in the sky at midnight on 1 October, and at midnight on 1 January it will be lying on its side in the south-east.

Finding south. There is no bright pole star in the southern hemisphere sky that can be used to locate due south in the same way that Polaris indicates north in the northern hemisphere. Instead, there are various ways of locating south by the Southern Cross.

First use the Southern Cross to locate the South Celestial Pole, then drop a vertical line from the South Celestial Pole to the horizon – this marks due south.

What is the nautical Southern Cross?

How is the Southern Cross used for navigation?. The Southern Cross can be used to point a navigator on the Earth’s surface toward the celestial south pole, according to EarthSky. A line drawn from Gacrux at the top of the cross through Acrux at the bottom will point to the south.

Navigators using traditional Polynesian wayfinding techniques also use the stars of the Southern Cross as one of many pointers to the south, according to the Polynesian Voyaging Society.

The cultural significance of the Southern Cross. The Southern Cross asterism appears in multiple national flags, as noted above. The stars were valuable guides to European explorers who left the stars they knew — Polaris and the Big Dipper, for example — to navigate seas in the Southern Hemisphere. The first European to describe the five stars of the Southern Cross, Andrea Corsali, wrote of their beauty and behavior in 1515 for his patrons in the Medici family, according to a 2019 article from Hordern House. Corsali’s description provided a resource for centuries of later European explorers.

What is the Southern Cross route?

Southern Cross Route is a term for passenger flights from Australasia (or Oceania) to Europe via the Western Hemisphere. The term was coined by British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines when they began services from Sydney to Vancouver in 1949. The route was extended to Europe following the signing of an air services agreement between Australia and the United Kingdom in 1957, which saw Qantas flying from Sydney to London via Los Angeles and New York using Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellations.: 145 The name is in honor of Sir Charles Kingsford Smith’s historic 1928 flight in the aircraft Southern Cross. The equivalent route running through the Eastern Hemisphere is known as the Kangaroo Route.

Qantas operated on the route from 1949 — 1974, when it discontinued the London leg of the trip.: 148 BOAC began flying to Australia via the South Pacific in April 1967. Air New Zealand operated an Auckland–Los Angeles–London Heathrow from 1982 — 2020. Other airlines to use the route include Air Tahiti Nui, French Bee, Air France, Air Canada, Aerolíneas Argentinas, and LAN Airlines.

Aside from codeshares and alliances/partners, airlines on the Southern Cross Route (with seasonal destinations in italics) are the following:

What is special about the Southern Cross?

In 1854 miners at Ballarat stood beneath a flag stitched with a Southern Cross as a symbol of freedom.

What does the Southern Cross symbolize?

In 1854 miners at Ballarat stood beneath a flag stitched with a Southern Cross as a symbol of freedom.

Why does the Marine Corps use the Southern Cross?

Why does the 1st Marine Division have the southern cross on their patch? – Quora. the patch was adopted and authorized for the Marines who fought and those who died during the Battle of Guadalcanal (Solomon Islands)…which the Southern Cross can be seen in the night sky.

Why is the Southern Cross important to sailors?

(/caption)For the lucky residents of the Southern Hemisphere, or those fortunate enough to enjoy a vacation in Hawaii or Cancun, there’s a stellar delight that few Northerners know about. It’s called the Southern Cross, a small but beautiful constellation located in the southern sky, very close to the neighboring constellation of Centaurus. Originally known by the Latin name Crux, which is due to its cross shape, this constellation is one of the easiest to identify in the night sky. For centuries, it has served as a navigational beacon for sailors, an important symbol to the Egyptians, and played an important role in the spiritual beliefs of the Aborigines and many other cultures in the Southern Hemisphere.

The first recorded example of Crux’s discovery was around 1000 BC during the time of the Ancient Greeks. At the latitude of Athens, Crux was clearly visible, though low in the night sky. At the time, the Greeks identified it as being part of the constellation Centaurus. However, the precession of the equinoxes gradually lowered its stars below the European horizon, and they were eventually forgotten by the inhabitants of northern latitudes. Crux fell into anonymity for northerners until the Age of Discovery (from the early 15th to early 17th centuries) when it was rediscovered by Europeans. The first to do so were the Portuguese, who mapped it for navigation uses while rounding the southern tip of Africa. During this time, Crux was also separated from Centaurus, though it is not altogether clear who was responsible. Some attribute it to the French astronomer Augustin Royer who did it in 1679 while others believe it was Dutch astronomer PetrusPlancius who did the deed in 1613. Regardless, it is believed to have taken place in the 17th century, placing it within the context of European expansion and the revolution that was taking place in the sciences at the time.

In terms of cultural significance, the Crux, like all constellations, played an important role in the belief system of many cultures. In the ancient mountaintop village of Machu Picchu, a stone engraving exists which depicts the constellation. In addition, in Quechua (the language of the Incas) Crux is known as “Chakana”, which literally means “stair”, and holds deep symbolic value in Incan mysticism (the cross represented the three tiers of the world: the underworld, world of the living, and the heavens). To the Aborigines and the Maori, Crux is representative of animist spirits who play a central role in their ancestral beliefs. To the ancient Egyptians, Crux was the place where the Sun Goddess Horus was crucified, and marked the passage of the winter season. The Southern Cross is also featured prominently on the flags of several southern nations, including Australia, Brazil, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, and Samoa.