Pub dispute
Peter has asked me to rule on a pub dispute. My answer was too big to reply as a comment, so it earned a post.
...in the southern hemisphere, the sun, moon and stars appear to rotate from right to left...
Right to left? Left to right? I'm confused. On an hourly basis the celestial sphere appears to rotate clockwise when looking at the northern celestial pole (as seen in Edimburgh -- I loved living in that city) and anti-clockwise when looking at the southern celestial pole (what I would see in auckland, if light pollution didn't obscure things). You can demonstrate this in the pub by rotating a ball (the earth) and having some look at it from above while others look at it from below. Take photos of this demonstration, because having some people lying down looking up and others standing on a barstool looking down will look good.
If you look at the starts on a daily basis (the same time every night) then you will see an anticlockwise rotation in the northern hemisphere, and clockwise in the southern hemisphere. (One degree of arc).
I can say that when I was visiting Perthshire several years back I got to see the stars, and the constellations were upside down, really freaky.
We don't have an equivalent to the North Star (Polaris) that stays static, the southern celestial pole appears empty as there isn't any stars of significant magnitude there, and the stars rotate about an empty space.
Regardless of how this pub dispute is ruled someone owes me a beer!
