While we’re certainly not experiencing tropical weather here in Wisconsin this spring, you can visit the tropics at UW-Milwaukee's Manfred Olson Planetarium. Their April show “Stars in the Tropics” takes stargazers to different cities near the equator to explore different night skies and astronomical monuments.
Planetarium director and Lake Effect astronomy contributor Jean Creighton joined Lake Effect’s Audrey Nowakoski to share more. She explains that the tropics form a band around the equator, with all latitudes between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn experiencing one day each year when the sun is directly overhead.
Observing the night sky from these tropical latitudes offers a different perspective than we’re used to seeing in the Midwest.
“Just like we can use the Big Dipper to find the North Star, they can use the the Southern Cross and the two bright stars and Centaurus to find South,” Creighton says.
For stargazers near the equator, constellations like the Southern Cross come into focus — and the moon appears differently as well.
“I’ve had students who come from different parts of the world, and they see how the crescent moon appears, and they think ‘woah, woah, that’s wrong,’” she says. “They’re used to seeing the moon as a ‘U’ when it sets – because the angle of the moon is different when you see it, say, from the equator.”
_
