This was the night I finished learning all the constellations, the last 20 or so of them. One has to admit that southern people are very lucky: they have the galactic center, a few of our brightest satellite galaxies (like the Magellanic clouds) and many more (Tarantula, Cen A, the Coalsack)...
A funny thing about our satellite galaxies: they are apparently orbiting the Milky Way in a common plane which is an indication that they might have formed during an interaction with another massive galaxy far away in the past. If true, this would pose some problems for the current cosmological model which predicts the formation of a few more tens of small galaxies around the Milky Way: and we don't see them!
Time will tell is LambdaCDM survives or it needs serious modifications/abandonment.
It was such a night that light was dripping from the sky, flowing onto the awesome Chilean Andes.
preferata mea:)
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