In the end, though, I simply marveled at the beauty of the sight and the reality of what was actually up there. Gorgeous.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/scott_hurst/3075187247/sizes/l/in/set-72157610557914307/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/scott_hurst/3076046024/sizes/l/in/set-72157610558052513/

They can be embiggened a great deal more.

Whose hubby’s whose and whose the illict lover here?

Is Venus the scarlet -er make that yellow – woman?

Is Jupiter like the namesake god being adulterous?

Is the Moon pregnant? (Fully morining sick phase?)

Or is Jupiter just Mooning Venus?

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PS @ Icemith, posting links here means your post goes into moderation. First time or frst couple of times you post here, same deal. It usually should come thro’ eventually as yours has. Lotsa folks here get around that by using the “website” bit in the submit reply form to post a link – course that only works with one link at a time and its a pain but its the BA’s blog and that’s how it goes – until he changes the system to something better.

Its interesting and relaxing to just stare up at the western sky around sunset comparing their respective brilliance and colour.

Its worth considering how different these worlds are and how far apart they truly are even as they seem so close in Earth’s skies.

Think as you watch that while Venus is really inside the Earth’s orbit less than 1 Astronomical Unit (the Earth-Sun ave. distance) away, Jupiter is about five times further out deep into the colder middle regions of our solar system surrounded by a retinue of icy moons some larger than Mercury and Pluto and of course our own Moon.

That while both these worlds have thick dense atmospheres, that on Venus is a scalding sulphuric acid one of mostly carbon dioxide trapping in the heat and making this otherwise earth-like rocky planet into a greenhouse hell – “Svante’s inferno!” (Svante being Svante Arrhenius, a physicist who, I think, first came up with the greenhouse FXT idea.) Below that dense atmosphere the lava rocks of the Venusian or, since we’re being poetic, Cytherean surface broil and swelter and bubble perhaps near the point of melting entirely and resurfacing the whole Cytherean globe in molten rock.

Contrast that mental imagery with Jupiter’s atmosphere which is cold, ammonia -rich with hurricanes the size of quadruple Earth diameters, lightning is common to both worlds, but lightning on Jove never strikes the ground, plunging instead through clouds that get thicker, more soupy more like liqiud then become a liquid then denserand denser liquid until they are transformed into metallic hydrogen, silvery and endless overlying the mystery of the Jovian core.

The scale of Jupiter staggers the mind and defies comprehension – yet there it is, the smaller and somewhat dimmer of those two luminous dots in the sky.

The brightness and beauty of the Morning and Evening star, Hesperus, Phosphorous, both old names for Venus, an object to which the Aztecs once sacrificed human lives and cut out bleeding, pumping human hearts in their warped religion thinking the heavenly speck was connected to their god Quetzalcoatl, a feathered serpent. (Well at least they had the reptile-bird bit sort of there .. )

Try to spot the crescent of Venus with your unaided eyes – apparently the very sharpest eyes can spot it. Venus cast shadows, it once over-shadowed the French general and Conqueror Napoleon. It is a fiery world with features named for historic and mythic women hidden under a scalding corrosive veil that human eyesight cannot pierce.

Then get out the binoculars or telescope and observe the four little dots that were Galileo’s “Medicean stars”, eruptive Io, Ocean-under-ice Europa, Geologically active largest moon record-holder Ganymede and poor battered Callisto as cratered as a moon can be. Watch them dance, these little worlds the first moons ever spotted beyond the Earthly realm and watch the shadows they cast on the banded cloudtops that form the chilly heights of a planet whose core seethes at temperatures and pressures breath-takingly high.

Look up at these worlds and reflect on what they are. Try to picture and imagine them in their full bizarre splendour their poetry and their scientific tangible reality. Look up at these worlds, these starry wanderers and ponder their natures and think and marvel and see science and poetry combine.

I recommend it!

Wish I was in Morocco to see this.

So go into Bintelshop’s website and the Night Sky tab to bring up the e-zine. I hope I’m not contravening any web rules by suggesting this.

Ivan.

here in Sydney, Australia. They have a depiction using Starry Night software, and the main thrust of the picture and the copy is that December 1st be henceforth be known as “Smiley Day”. And it looks about right. Not sure if they have an e-Zine version – I guess I should have checked that first.

For we Southern Hemisphericals at least, as our planetary orientation means we see it AS a smiley face, rightway up, whereas our northern friends will be up to 90 degrees offset and not as recognisable as a face. : ) or ( : not sure which, but we will probably miss out on seeing it as a scowl, as it will be below our horizon : ( after the occultation, or its near miss for those other than Europe and NW Africa.

Anyway that is how I interpret the event. Interesting to see just how it turns out.

Ivan.

I shall be hoping for clear skies too around sunset or and later.

Venus is not an UFO!

A bonus was last week when ISS with the Endeavor orbiter attached to it went “beside” the two shortly after sunset. We were able to see details on the laboratory with binoculars…nothing like the fanstastic telescope shots that are often posted on spaceweather.com, but still, enough that one could tell that ISS was a man-made thing and not just a bright dot of light in the sky!

Here’s my best picture of Venus & Jupiter:
http://floridaeveryoneforgot.blogspot.com/2008/11/venus-jupiter.html