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To: Prodigal Son
Is Saturn the very bright object in the east about 11 pm? I thought that was Jupiter, I know Jupiter was in that neck of the woods a few years back.
61 posted on 12/31/2003 2:54:32 AM PST by djf
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To: djf
Is Saturn the very bright object in the east about 11 pm? I thought that was Jupiter, I know Jupiter was in that neck of the woods a few years back.

Saturn is currently "north" of Orion; at 11pm, it would be closer to overhead than East.

Jupiter is just crawling over the eastern horizon around 11pm these days; it's MUCH brighter than Saturn, or almost anything else in the night sky, save for the moon, and perhaps Venus.

64 posted on 12/31/2003 8:48:50 AM PST by longshadow
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To: djf
Is Saturn the very bright object in the east about 11 pm?

Right now, you're getting Saturn, Jupiter and Mars at night, with Venus early in the evening. I use this interactive chart (below)- it's pretty useful:

Night Sky Map

What you can do with it is set your latitude (I'm at about 55 degrees here in Scotland), set the date you wish to view and then increase the time by hours or minutes or days to see how the sky will look. It allows you to print a portion you're interested in. It's a pretty neat tool, in my opinion. Play with it a little bit (making sure you get the dates right). If the link doesn't work, let me know and I'll give you a different one.

Saturn is getting well up in the sky between 9PM and Midnight right now, rising in the east and tracking across the sky in the E- ESE- S and setting to westward. To find it, you'll need to be able to identify the constellation Orion

Once you've found Orion and as you stand facing it in the night sky, make an imaginary line from Orion's foot (in the diagram above Beta), straight through the center of his belt and carry on through Betelgeuse and off to the left. You will come to a bright yellow star- this is Saturn at present. Slightly to the left of Saturn you'll see two more bright stars, Castor and Pollox, which make up the heads of the twins in the constellation Gemini. Saturn is actually between the legs of the twins. But once you've identified Orion- which is a pretty distinct feature of the sky- finding Saturn should be easy.

Jupiter rises later in the evening- after midnight- and can be found near Leo and Virgo.

67 posted on 12/31/2003 11:02:24 AM PST by Prodigal Son
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