Great Ocean Road by Night

The dark starry sky of the Great Ocean Road in Victoria, Australia. The southern Milky Way from Centaurus to the Southern Cross (top) appears over the Southern Ocean. The Small Magellanic Cloud is on the upper right; a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. The green and red cast above the horizon is the natural emission of the Earth upper atmosphere known as the airglow. Aboriginal peoples in Australia believed that the dark patches in the Milky Way represent a giant Emu in the Sky (Emu is the largest bird native to Australia). The prominent dark nebula (known as the Coalsack) just under the Southern Cross is the Emu’s head, the neck goes through bright stars Alpha and Beta Centauri and the wider part of the Milky Way in Scorpius becomes the Emu’s body (below the horizon. Click on the second photo to see a sunset panoramic view of the coast.