Calling all astronomers

The Moon didn’t get to SE until around 12.30PM with an elevation of nearly 70 degrees. Of course when you’re looking at an object well above the horizon it can look as though it’s in a different position.

Yes Sue, if the sky is clear you can see it easily with the naked eye. There are a number of apps for iPhone and Android that do it. Here’s a photo we took. My camera can capture the progress of the ISS across the sky.

I use https://www.heavens-above.com/. It’s a web site developed by a guy called Chris Peat. There are lists of which satellites can be seen and when. We often go out in the evening to watch for the ISS to come over. If you know when it is coming and from which direction, it’s easy to identify.

If it doesn’t move it’s not the ISS. The ISS moves fast and is just over 400km above the ground. It orbits the earth every 92.9 minutes.

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it was certainly later than 6pm Frenchtime that I first noticed the Jupiter/Moon spectacle… but it was the Jupiter 7 position to the moon that I specifically noticed and that you mentioned, so we were obviously talking about the same event.

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Certainly nothing like that late. Maybe my ESE is not in the same place as yours. :slight_smile:

:joy::joy::joy::joy::joy:

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It does sound like you observed the Moon and Jupiter combo a little later than you thought, Sue.

That doesn’t sound quite right to me Professor HB - at least not looking at the star app and the suntracker app that I have.

The Moon would have risen at about 120 degrees from North (with East being 90 degrees) so East-South-East on a compass. As with the Sun, it doesn’t rise in the North-East until the summer.

Here’s the sunrise/sunset plot for Bergerac today, as an example:

Venus explained… look westward… I’ve been watching for it at sunset… and it suddenly appears… a little higher each night.

it’s a fine sight - but not near the Moon though, so I think we can eliminate it from our enquiries. :smiley:

If you see the Moon and Venus together, the Moon will be a very slim crescent, as it will be close to its “new Moon” phase.

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Exactly !!!

I don’t carry a compass these days… but I know my West from my East… vaguely… :rofl: :rofl:
and the recent glorious "beaver"moon rose in the East… :wink:

I have only just been introduced to Flightradar24 to track all the aircraft that fly over head, but all of a sudden a whole new interest has sprung up.

Only thing is, N and E are blocked to me by the close high stands of trees.

But my kitchen veranda faces due south so I have a good view of S and W without having to go out in the cold. :grinning:

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This is today at the current time in Bergerac. The Moon and Jupiter are below the horizon and traveling in a direction that will bring them above the horizon close to NE. Not sure what you’re looking at, but this is what will happen :person_shrugging:
The line between the red points N and E is the horizon.

I’d call that Jupiter 5, which is fair comment since it is gradually moving… but I’ll check it out tonight… :wink: :wink:

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so you get lovely sunsets … or I hope you do… they’ve been particularly gorgeous lately.

Yes, the moon, stars and Jupiter aare moving relative to each other. Yesterday it was at 7 o’clock. Tonight it’s moved to around 4.30

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We do, over the hills in the West (now the SW) and I always feel so sorry for the poor folks who live in the valley. :worried:

In the summer when we spend lots of time on the terrace (east facing) we have started using it. We mainly see flights to and from Alicante!

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Sadly that bit has clouds on it :rofl::rofl:

It’s the Moon that has moved the most around its orbit between yesterday and today, because it’s closest to us.

Jupiter will have moved a fraction, but not so as to be perceptible to the naked eye, because it takes almost 12 years to orbit the sun. The Earth’s movement around the Sun makes more of a difference to the apparent position of Jupiter in the sky than its actual motion does.

The stars are also moving but because of their extreme distance from us you won’t see that except on a timescale of centuries.

Well that’s weird that our programs should tell us two different things.

I was using an app called Sun Tracker to plot the location of sunrise and sunset, as in my second screenshot above (the top-down map one).

You can see the same layout in this online sun calculator:

OK - problem solved - with a bit more Googling it seems the moonrise direction can be very different from the sunrise direction - I had assumed that they would be similar.

As it happens, at the moment (again using Bergerac as the location) the moon is rising at 49 degrees North-East while the sun is rising at 117 degrees East-South-East.

So I take my hat off to Professor @hairbear - your chart is correct! Actually so is mine where the Sun is concerned, but we’re talking about the Moon not the Sun!

Well, I don’t know about you stargazing buffs…
but I know for a fact that my house stands still and the night sky revolves around it… :rofl: :rofl:

and, drat it, there’s a huge black cloud covering everything…
it came from nowhere and I watched in horror as it engulfed Venus happily sitting in the twilight…

now I can’t see a darn thing… ah well, there’s always tomorrow :crossed_fingers:

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