Here are paired sky scenes for the mornings and evenings of the coming weekend:
See the end note about enlarging illustrations.
The red curve is the ecliptic, to which solar-system bodies tend to cling. The blue curve is the celestial equator, which arches from the east point to the west point; and the arrows on it show how far the sky will rotate in the next hour – stars rising from the eastern horizon and going down to the west,
It’s interesting to compare the scenes at the two ends of the day, over the opposite sides of the horizon, even if only to find that little is happening on the morning side compared with the evening, or vice versa.
Scenes like this, for the ten “best” days of each month – many of them more interesting than this pair, with crowds of planets and the Moon – will illustrate my online Astronomical Calendar 2022, which I am hurrying to get finished – it looks like being 128 pages, so, as you can imagine, it has been taking time, which is why I’ve been sparing little time for blog posts. Here are more glimpses of what will be in it.
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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.
Is there any chance that you would ever publish a hard-copy Astronomical Calendar again? I was not out of high school when you published your last one but am a huge fan and would love to get one at some point. If it happened, I think I might purchase 10 for me and all of my friends
Thanks for your enthusiasm, Brendan. There is a faint chance that after Astronomical Calendar 2022 is published online it could a;so be printed by a print-on-demand method. That’s why I have reduced its page size, to keep this possibiity open. I can also dream that some other organization could take it up and print it in quantity. Unfortunately it’s impossible for me again to get books printed in the former way, involving quantities and warehousing and order-handling.
Wow, thanks Guy. This looks like the most ambitious online Astronomical Calendar yet. How would it work to print out the calendar (or probably selected sections) on double-sided 8.5 x 11 inch paper?
I’ve been enjoying watching Venus zipping along from delta Scorpii to Antares and looking a little bigger and more obviously gibbous through binoculars. Jupiter and Saturn have been a treat through the binoculars, more so through my little refractor. Ceres has just gotten bright enough to discern through 10×42 image-stabilized binoculars when she is near the zenith before dawn.
I think it will be printable any way you want, depending on the app through which you’re looking at it, but I’ll be looking forward to learning what people’s experiences are.
Thank you for once again producing your Astronomical Calendar. A yearly scientific treasure returns!
I don’t want to miss the 2022 calendar. So glad you’re doing this.
I’ve just come in from my evening walk and Venus, Antares, Saturn and Jupiter are all beautifully clear.