It will take roughly 125,000 years for our solar system to rotate around the centre of the Milky Way to begin to see a similar sky in the Northern Hemisphere.
The central band of the Milky Way is directly overhead in the Southern Hemisphere, but in the Northern hemisphere it stays lower down towards the horizon, which makes the stars less visible. it is not only down to air and light pollution that the view from the Northern and Southern Hemispheres are different. When most people talk about seeing the Milky Way - they are referring to the ‘core’ of the Milky Way. The first image is from the Mackenzie Country in New Zealand, and the second image was taken in Elephant and Castle, in London. The images in the film contain two images, taken six months apart. I moved to cities in the UK as a teenager, and have felt the change in my view as a significant loss. I was part of something bigger than my immediate environment. It was clear that I was standing on an oasis of life, looking into the uninhabitable darkness. Under that starlight, I really felt like we were collectively looking outwards, trying to unpick the mysteries of the universe and basking in its magnificence. Every time I saw the Milky Way, I was electrified inside with the ideas of the vastness of the universe, and the infinite possibilities that might exist. I grew up under an immensely starry night sky. It has taken thousands of years of knowledge building to begin to understand the size of our universe, or the amount of stars, galaxies and planets that we share it with. It’s hard to imagine not knowing that Earth isn’t the centre of the universe, or that there aren’t other galaxies.
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