Waving the flag

The Southern Cross constellation is a distinctive feature of our night sky.

- Bob Brockie

The Matariki stars get all the headlines these days, but they are not the only iconic stars in our skies. At the end of the Milky Way shine four bright stars that feature on our national flag - the Southern Cross.

The Southern Cross was known to ancient Greeks and Romans as Crux, but as the Earth gradually tipped over (known as the precession of the equinoxes), Crux disappeared over their southern horizon. They lost sight of it and won't see it in their skies again for about 16,000 years.

In the other half of the world, knowledgeable Polynesian navigators used the Southern Cross to find their way around the Pacific. The constellation is known by the Hawaiian, Tahitian and Samoan peoples as Hānaiakamalama ("cared for by the Moon"). To some Māori, it was the anchor of a great sky canoe; to others, an opening in the sky that the winds blew through.

Indigenous Australians have a range of names for the Southern Cross, some seeing the stars as a stingray being chased by a shark, and others as an eagle's footprint.