Firstly, I’ve done 87 of these now and I deserve a medal, email in if you agree. And as always there’s a little more information on the blog.
This week Mercury is hidden in the solar glare, as is Saturn. Venus is receding now and slowly moving away from us behind the sun, and so is starting to dim after a very bright run starting late last year. After the moon its still the brightest object in the sky and still dominates the dawn sky. Venus’s decent into the sun is a pretty slow one and it won’t be until February when Venus will return to the evening sky again, just as Jupiter disappears into the sunset. So basically what I’m saying is you can’t win, but don’t shoot the messenger.
And Jupiter is still there as blatant as an Oran U Tang in an ice cream van dominating the southern sky all night. This week is a particularly good week to look at it, the sky was wonderfully clear on Monday, and the easterly winds shouldn’t carry much moisture.
Its some consolation that Mars has now firmly escaped the clutches of the dawn, which sounds like a Michael Moorcock book, which he mercifully didn’t write, though I must say in my mid teens I was a great Michael Moorcock fan, which is no recommendation at all, the clutches of the dawn, it has a certain ring to it. Anyway Mars is now timidly peeping over the eastern horizon by 1am, but isn’t really showing well till 4am when its hanging around Gemini in the e sou east sky, tonight in almost a straight line with Venus and the moon.
Saturn is lost behind the Sun, and it’s just had its equinox, because the rings were edge on to us, but we can’t see them anyway, and we’re about to get ours. Next Tuesday, not Monday the 21st, when everywhere in the world whether you live in Canberra or God have mercy on you Camborne, will have a twelve hour day, and we leave the embers of summer behind and slide into Autumn cruel grasp. Which means I can talk about the autumn equinox when the earth’s orbital axis is perpendicular, or at a right angle, to its orbital plane with respect the sun. So far the next 6 months the South Pole will be angled towards the sun and the north away. So if you are one of our many Antarctic listeners working at the pole, its only another 3 weeks until the first plane since February comes in, but you may have known that already. For us Hiboreans, the frozen folk who live beyond the North Wind, it means autumn then winter, but we can console ourselves that Orion will soon be back with us, dominating the southern sky till next spring.
And if you’re one of the hardy folk walking between the Islands on Sunday, its all been made possible by the equinox. The Equinoctial Spring Tides this year fall on a new rather than a full moon, the tides are big because the earths axis is perpendicular to the ecliptic, the plane of the moon and the sun, so the tidal bulge is undistorted by any angular momentum effects. But if you are going be aware that Barbara will be know precisely who’s walking the walk and you could well come back to find that your house has been entirely cleaned out, an empty shell, gutted.
That was your nights sky for the week ending next Tuesday on the 230th anniversary of the establishment of the position of United States Postmaster General. The first one being one Samuel Osgood
This week Mercury is hidden in the solar glare, as is Saturn. Venus is receding now and slowly moving away from us behind the sun, and so is starting to dim after a very bright run starting late last year. After the moon its still the brightest object in the sky and still dominates the dawn sky. Venus’s decent into the sun is a pretty slow one and it won’t be until February when Venus will return to the evening sky again, just as Jupiter disappears into the sunset. So basically what I’m saying is you can’t win, but don’t shoot the messenger.
And Jupiter is still there as blatant as an Oran U Tang in an ice cream van dominating the southern sky all night. This week is a particularly good week to look at it, the sky was wonderfully clear on Monday, and the easterly winds shouldn’t carry much moisture.
Its some consolation that Mars has now firmly escaped the clutches of the dawn, which sounds like a Michael Moorcock book, which he mercifully didn’t write, though I must say in my mid teens I was a great Michael Moorcock fan, which is no recommendation at all, the clutches of the dawn, it has a certain ring to it. Anyway Mars is now timidly peeping over the eastern horizon by 1am, but isn’t really showing well till 4am when its hanging around Gemini in the e sou east sky, tonight in almost a straight line with Venus and the moon.
Saturn is lost behind the Sun, and it’s just had its equinox, because the rings were edge on to us, but we can’t see them anyway, and we’re about to get ours. Next Tuesday, not Monday the 21st, when everywhere in the world whether you live in Canberra or God have mercy on you Camborne, will have a twelve hour day, and we leave the embers of summer behind and slide into Autumn cruel grasp. Which means I can talk about the autumn equinox when the earth’s orbital axis is perpendicular, or at a right angle, to its orbital plane with respect the sun. So far the next 6 months the South Pole will be angled towards the sun and the north away. So if you are one of our many Antarctic listeners working at the pole, its only another 3 weeks until the first plane since February comes in, but you may have known that already. For us Hiboreans, the frozen folk who live beyond the North Wind, it means autumn then winter, but we can console ourselves that Orion will soon be back with us, dominating the southern sky till next spring.
And if you’re one of the hardy folk walking between the Islands on Sunday, its all been made possible by the equinox. The Equinoctial Spring Tides this year fall on a new rather than a full moon, the tides are big because the earths axis is perpendicular to the ecliptic, the plane of the moon and the sun, so the tidal bulge is undistorted by any angular momentum effects. But if you are going be aware that Barbara will be know precisely who’s walking the walk and you could well come back to find that your house has been entirely cleaned out, an empty shell, gutted.
That was your nights sky for the week ending next Tuesday on the 230th anniversary of the establishment of the position of United States Postmaster General. The first one being one Samuel Osgood
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