(Today) Wednesday, Nov 19, 2008 @ 4:15PM Eastern Time
Posted on 11/19/2008 7:59:03 AM PST by ETL
I gathered the following five sky maps from the website heavens-above.com. They show the apparent eastward movement of Venus over the next two weeks. Venus is now extremely bright and easily seen by naked eye hanging in the southwest sky at, and possibly a bit before, sunset (Venus is currently setting a little over 2 hours after the Sun). In fact, it is so bright at this time that it can be, and often is, mistaken for the headlight of an approaching airplane or hovering helicopter. Anyway, once you find Venus (duh), look not too far to the upper left of it and you will see another very bright 'star-like' object. This is the planet Jupiter. Venus is currently about 100 million miles away from Earth. Jupiter is now about 500 million. Although both planets are very bright, Venus is the brighter of the two, and, as mentioned, the one on the lower right. But if this isn't an impressive enough show for you, on Dec 1st, the pair will be about as close they will get in the sky and be joined by the Moon! Notice how the Moon begins to move into the picture by the 4th map (Nov 29th).
Note: the red dot seen on the map is the setting Sun. Each of the five maps is of the same time of day (4:15PM ET). I selected this time specifically because it is about the time that the Sun is currently setting. And, although Mars is shown on the map, it is far too close to the Sun in the sky and will NOT be visible, so don't even try. You will probably go blind trying (literally).
(Today) Wednesday, Nov 19, 2008 @ 4:15PM Eastern Time
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Sunday, Nov 23, 2008 @ 4:15PM Eastern Time
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Nov 27, 2008 @ 4:15PM Eastern Time
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Nov 29, 2008 @ 4:15PM Eastern Time
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Dec 1, 2008 @ 4:15PM Eastern Time
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Source: heavens-above.com
http://heavens-above.com/
ping!
awww central coast....very nice area...was in arroyo grande for a short time...loved it...
Venus, when it is bright like it is now, can actually be seen in broad daylight with the bare eye, IF you know precisely where to look and IF the sky is deep blue and IF your vision is very good and IF you have the patience to stand around outside (in public) staring up at the sky for 5-10 minutes trying to find it. Otherwise, if you have a pair of binoculars and a good idea of where to look, and have them in proper focus for distant objects, you can also find it that way. It's obviously easier. Not 'easy', but 'easier'.
We like it. We’re sort of hermits and try not to leave the acreage very often. I just loathe “errand” days and have one coming up tomorrow. I just want to lock the gate and revel in the garden.
how can you enjoy it if you stay behind locked gates...??...lol...i couldn’t get enough of it when i was there....
Well, my gate locks us inside 33 acres so we have a lot of ground to cover. In the middle of a redwood forest.
Oh I know about Venus and Jupiter. Saturn and its rings and moons on the other hand.
You must live pretty far north. Here in the Dallas area our local time of sunset (CST) today is 5:23. Many people don’t realize how much different the length of day is, even within the United States, from northern to southern latitudes. Of course the time of sunset, by definition, changes about an hour from one side of a time zone to the next. Also little known fact is that the earliest sunset is around 8 December, not when winter “officially” begins. And the latest sunrise is on down in January. Heavens-above.com is a great source for all of this kind of information, thanks for the post.
You’re welcome, and excellent points about different sunset times for different latitudes. Of course the reason time zones generally differ by an hour east and west is that they represent a 15 degree swath of longitude. (15 x 24[hrs] = 360)
I just took advantage of a clearance sale on the 80mm Celestron Onyx refractor (and the Microsoft Live Search 25% cashback program through eBay 'buy it now'), and bought a bunch of accessories, and the last missing pieces arrived at my door this morning.
I've been meaning to set up my first 'observing plan' and this should help - I figure that I should be able to get both into my wide field of view at the same time... The only remaining questions are whether my southern horizon will cooperate and whether I can stand the wind-chill...
Sort of: NYC
The planets should be even higher at your latitude. Go to the heavens-above.com website, register and then click 'whole sky chart'. That's how I got the sky maps I posted. Notice on the maps I posted, because of my ~40.5N latitude, the path the planets are on (the ecliptic) is especially far south at this time of the year for this time of the day (4:15PM ET). Also see their 'Planet Summary' and 'ISS' for a visible pass schedule for the International Space Station, which is currently hooked together with the Space Shuttle.
That is awesome. I might try to look for it in daytime, thank you!!
You are making me SICK with envy.
:-(
Fine, but I need to warn you that it will be next to impossible to see by bare eye alone. Even with binoculars you will need to know exactly where to look AND have the bins in proper focus in order to scan the sky and find the tiny white speck of Venus. (in bright daylight it appears as a tiny white speck --soon after sunset its brightness is overwhelming and it 'appears' much larger).
Heh. Sorry ‘bout that. I am pretty smug about my little piece of Paradise here. It was a long time coming, and there was never a free lunch along the way. I’m just hoping the Stock Market leaves me enough to keep it in repair and all that in the precious few minutes/hours/days/years I have left on the planet.
I hope so too, and I really am happy for you. So nice, you can have all that and FReep too.:-)
Thank you.
And I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving next week.
Ours is small; 15 year old twins, their dad and my neighbor. Best kind of crowd........small.!
On Nov. 15th in the skies above China, a winged shadow flitted across the Moon. It couldn't have been a bird, however, because it was flying 17,000 mph:
"The International Space Station (ISS) transited the Moon at 3:38 China Standard Time," says Xin Li of the Beijing Planetarium. "We photographed the event using a Meade 8" LX200 and a ToUCam video camera." The flyby occurred not long after the space shuttle docked with the ISS, so there are actually two spacecraft in the picture. Can you find Endeavour?
Two nights later, Nov. 17th, the ISS and Endeavour passed in front of the Moon again, this time over Cracow, Poland (photo):
Lunar transits are not rare, but they can be challenging to observe because the space station crosses the 0.5o face of the Moon in a split second. Usually the human behind the camera sees nothing until a later search through video frames reveals the fleeting silhouette.
There is an easier way. Look for the "anti-silhouette." In other words, watch the glowing body of the space station cross the great expanse of the night sky. The ISS outshines Jupiter and often Venus; you can't miss it! All you need are flyby times.
More images: from Mark Staples of Waldo, Florida; from Pieter Ibelings of Atlanta, Georgia; from David Tremblay of Alto, New Mexico.
To view the additional images, see spaceweather.com for Nov 19, 2008:
http://www.spaceweather.com/
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