A close grouping of three planets, in the evening sky, but very low to the horizon.
See the end note about enlarging illustrations.
They are about 15° from the Sun, but less than 3° up from the horizon, and about to set.
Jupiter is brightest of the three, at magnitude -2; then Mercury at -1; Saturn is dimmest, at magnitude 1, besides being lowest. Glimpsing them might be more possible if Jupiter, instead of Saturn, was kissing the horizon
The arrows through the moving bodies, including the Sun, indicate their movement from 2 days before to 2 days after the time of the picture.
Mercury passed 1.6° south of Saturn on Jan. 10 at 5 hours Universal Time, and 1.4° south of Jupiter on Jan. 11 at 19 UT. Their tightest grouping was on Jan. 10 at 19 UT, when Mercury was about half way between the other two and they fitted in a circle with diameter 2.4°.
As its arrow shows, Mercury is moving forward, therefore on the far side of the Sun from us, with the other two also of course beyond the Sun and moving forward but at far greater distances.
The picture is a more magnified view than I usually give. Comments are welcome on this, as well as on whether you manage to spot one, two, three, or zero planets.
Earthly Comments Department
When you make a comment to this blog, I get an email asking me to “approve” it, which I regularly do. This is what the system requires.
Once, I hesitated: the commenter (a friend, let’s call him Mountain Man) retailed an obscene joke about Hillary Clinton. I decided not to censor it. Maybe I overvalue the Persian proverb “Nothing witty should be wasted.” Several protested, I was persuaded to their view. and offered Mountain Man the chance to withdraw his comment; he argued that the joke hadn’t started with him and that we didn’t have his sense of humor, but he accepted, and I deleted it. That was the only time. (Apart from spam comments, which are probably abundant but, mercifully, get filtered out by the system.)
I thought of this when reading today of the division of opinion, mainly among Republicans, about the banning of Trump from Twitter and Facebook. Some, such as his daughter Tiffany, protested “Whatever happened to Freedom of Speech?”
The First Amendment to the US constitution says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
It is a restriction on the government, not on individuals or corporations or other groups.
Twitter and my blog are on different scales. But if I can decline to publish something, Twitter can. I am not obliged to publish everything sent to me, nor is a magazine, or a book publisher, or a social-media platform. It can decline to approve effusions it judges to be obscene, or liable to incite hate, crime, violence, overthrow of legitimate government.
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ILLUSTRATIONS in these posts are made with precision but have to be inserted in another format. You may be able to enlarge them on your monitor. One way: right-click, and choose “View image”, then enlarge. Or choose “Copy image”, then put it on your desktop, then open it. On an iPad or phone, use the finger gesture that enlarges (spreading with two fingers, or tapping and dragging with three fingers). Other methods have been suggested, such as dragging the image to the desktop and opening it in other ways.
Sometimes I make improvements or corrections to a post after publishing it. If you click on the title, rather than on ‘Read more’, I think you are sure to see the latest version.
This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
Does Donald Trump smoke never seen a photo of him doing so but he probably support the smoking industry along with the other world killing industries;cars,roads and petrochemical.i think that if I saw Donald coming up a hill smoking a cigar I might step aside although apart from golf, and I expect that even there electric golf carts are his steed, although I suspect that walking and hiking would be activities he’d regard with contempt?
I read somewhere that Trump doesn’t drink alcohol or smoke.
“Piblishing”, in the next to last paragraph (in your instructions at the end), should be “publishing”. Other than that, your postings are terrific! Thank you for them and for all the many years of Astro Calendars!
Thank you, typo corrected (my proofreader had gone to bed).
And while at it, I decided to change the final word “rebellion” to “overthrow of legitimate government”. Rebellion is sometimes justified, though not in the US any more; “sedition” is not clear to everyone; “insurrection”, the term now being frequently used, is not clearly distinct from “rebellion”. “Overthrow of legitimate government” fits, I think, both what Trump has been calling for and what the mob was attempting to do.
Northeast CT. We had a nice viewing tonight of all three planets. I was struck by how bright Mercury was compared to Saturn. Did not expect that. Also, I assume because of the red sunset, Mercury was sparkling, changing colors, putting on quite a show.
I caught them tonight! https://bkellysky.wordpress.com/2021/01/10/three-of-a-kind/
Saturn JUST discernible and about to hide among the twigs!
Thank you!
Thanks – I couldn’t see Saturn in the camera while I was taking the photos. Just in binoculars.
Absolutely correct take on the reach of the First Amendment, Guy. Twitter and Facebook had ample grounds to suspend Trump long ago for his steady stream of falsehoods and incendiary rhetoric. One has to wonder how many lives would have been spared from Covid-19 and the insurrection had they cut him off earlier.
Thank you for all you do.
I’ve bid farewell to Saturn and Jupiter for their current apparitions. While we’re not getting any rain (we’re having a drought, this year’s fire season in California will be worse than last year’s — unimaginable), the weather is cloudy. And with the corona virus surging, even walking up the hill to get an open view to the southwest feels like an expedition through dangerous terrain. If the weather cooperates, I’ll try to see Mercury when he gets higher above the sunset horizon.
I find it ironic that many people who complain the loudest about their own right to spew hatred and lies are the quickest to try to silence those who disagree with them.
I hope that doesn’t sound too bitter. I’m still getting my head around the recent assault on our Capitol.
Just smoke your cigar on the way up the hill. Everyone will get out of your way.
As I understand it, the debate is over liability for defamation of character of individuals or organizations. As private enterprises, Twitter and Facebook do have the right to censor content at their discretion. But when they do this, they are choosing what they want to publish. That makes them similar to a publisher or editor of other media such as book publishers or newspaper publishers. If a newspaper prints false information that harms somebody’s reputation, they can be sued for defamation of character. Likewise, a website should be able to be sued if they consistently publish material harmful to a certain person or organization. Social media platforms rightfully censor hate speech from white supremacist groups but then do not censor hate speech aimed at Trump and other conservatives.
Social media platforms claim they are NOT liable for defamation citing section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Section 230 was designed to limit the liability of websites who censor content deemed to be harmful to our youth. But Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerburg use Section 230 to limit their liability for defamation of character of political parties and politicians that they do not like. This was not the original intent of section 230.
Good point, regarding the lawful protections enjoyed by these publishers. Also, as I understand it, the Big Tech controversy is not (despite what Guy believes and what he believes Tiffany believes) strictly a First Amendment issue. There is also anti-trust and anti-monopolistic arguments to be made as Big Tech is also trying to crush and restrict access to alternative social media platforms, such as Parlor.
I will admit I was a little dismayed at the number of people sharing a couple of news blurbs about this little “conjunction-like-thing”, as I knew it was going to be ridiculously low from my spot here at 38.44°N. Jupiter, at 17:15 ET (22:15 U) was a mere 9° above the horizon, and as you know, it was the highest of the three.
While I wanted to point out to all of those sharing about the conjunction, I had other things to worry about. As I mentioned over on my social media page, though, my chief worry about these sort of things is the potential they have to turn people off to stargazing.
Oh, and re your other point here.
Yes.
Cloud forcast for me but those 3 are so low that I doubt that I’d see them anyhow.i,in late 2020, bought a pair of Helios 2×40 wide field binoculars, basically a cheaper version of the souped up opera glasses that Vixen….I think that they are 2.5×42,brought out a few years ago.they should come into their own for aspying Mercury just after sunset (sun below the horizon obviously).I have seen Uranus in them already and I thought some nacrous clouds yesterday but sadly what I saw turned out to be just some kind of high topospheric clouds.alway fascinating nacrous and nocluicent clouds and aurora as they are sort of on the border between metrology and astronomy.
Enjoy the view. The planetary grouping isn’t visible from my location in the Southern Hemisphere, where the planets are lost in the glare of the latest sunsets of the year.