Posted on 12/12/2020 3:10:29 PM PST by MtnClimber
Explanation: During this northern summer Saturn and Jupiter were both near opposition, opposite the Sun in planet Earth's sky. Their paired retrograde motion, seen about every 20 years, is followed from 19 June through 28 August in this panoramic composite as they wander together between the stars in western Capricornus and eastern Sagittarius. But this December's skies find them drawing even closer together. Jupiter and Saturn are now close, bright celestial beacons in the west after sunset. On solstice day December 21 they will reach their magnificent 20 year Great Conjunction. Then the two largest worlds in the Solar System will appear in Earth's sky separated by only about 1/5 the apparent diameter of a Full Moon.
All those shiny stars look the same to me.
Growing up in India, in summer time we had beds moved to the open terrace on 3rd floor to escape heat, and I can still recall (after 60+ years) how filled the sky was with countless shiny objects. Days were very hot reaching 110 deg on occasion but at night, it was breezy and nice on the open terrace.
I think the occultation took place when both the moon and Venus were invisible in the US (or at least most of it).
What really was seen way back when.....
The Star by Arthur C. Clarke
https://sites.uni.edu/morgans/astro/course/TheStar.pdf
But as I pointed out before, daytime is the best time to observe Venus in its crescent phases. And it would have been easy to find it in this case given that it was right near the moon, which is usually easy to see in the daytime sky.
But the moon becomes invisible when it is a very narrow crescent. I saw the moon before sunrise on Dec. 11 and it was a pretty narrow crescent then...it was cloudy this morning so I did not attempt to see it, but it would have been narrower.
The moon rarely gets so thin that it’s invisible. But of course that depends on your eyesight. I can see it with my naked eye even when it’s really thin. Believe it or not, when I used to do it some years ago, I could actually see Venus in the daytime sky. And I confirmed it by then putting the binocs on it. I had to first have some general idea of where it was. If I didn’t have some general idea, I’d probably never find it.
Some years ago there was a contest (reported in Sky & Telescope) to see who could see the new moon the shortest time after astronomical new moon. It was something like 14 hours and I suppose some minutes. That was under the best possible conditions.
I have seen all five of the naked eye planets and have managed to see Uranus and Neptune through a telescope. At that time there were 9 planets. Now that Pluto has been demoted I can say I have seen all the planets in the solar system (but I still want to think of Pluto as a planet).
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