On the 5th of Feb I'd been to Opeth concert at Palace Grounds in Bangalore. The stage was setup really well. I was all kinds of high and ready to get my mind blown by Opeth. But just at the dawn of the concert I looked up at the darkening sky and I could see Venus, Jupiter and Moon line up with the stage. It was a wonderful cosmic scene. The first image shows this view.
I went back home to trace the paths of these planets to see if the alignment gets any better to see through the naked eye and guess what... it does. In the coming few days Im expecting to see some awesome alignments. Without a telescope, this is a pretty pleasing sight to the naked eye.
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| Feb 5th 2012 |
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| Feb 26th 2012 |
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| Mar 14th 2012 |
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In the second image, I also think Mercury is visible under the triangular alignment of Jupiter, Moon and Venus. By the time we reach the 3rd image, I think Mercury would have started its retrograde motion and gone back down towards the horizon and won't be visible properly. I should check my
ephemeris data.
Apart from these, there are some pretty awesome things to look at right now. The night sky is filled with the cool stuff on the far side of the milky way.
- Firstly the Great Nebula in Orion's sword.
- Secondly, Pleides (and Haydes also, but we'll only see Aldeberan from the polluted skies of most Indian cities)
- There also are the cool constellation along the Orion arm of the milky way with some of the brightest stars in the sky - Cassiopeia, Perseus (Algol), Auriga (Capella), Taurus (Aldebran), Gemini (Castor, Pollux), Orion (Betelguese, Riegel), Canis Minor (Procyon), Canis Major (Sirius), Carina (Canopus)
- Among the stars visible, Sirius is the brightest star and Canopus is the second brightest
So happy star-gazing. Enjoy the winter sky.
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