Mind’s sigh

Low in the morning sky, Mercury is passing close south of remote Saturn. And as the waning Moon comes by, south of them both, the three form a “trio,” a minimal cluster.

See the end note about enlarging illustrations.

The trio is at its tightest – the centers of the three bodies within a circle of diameter 4.2° – on March 1 at 1 by Universal Time. This is 5 or more hours earlier by American clocks, thus back in the night between Feb. 28 and Mrch 1. And for a north-hemisphere latitude, such as the US or Europe, the Moon appears up to a degree farther south, thus more widely separated from the planets. In short, you can try with binoculars for the two planets very close to the horizon, but the slim Moon will not yet have risen, and the trio is another of those events to be experienced by that famous magical instrument, the Mind’s Eye!

Hereis the sequence of events:

Mar  1 Tue  1    Moon, Mercury, and Saturn within circle of diameter 4.19°; about 23° from Sun; magnitudes -6, -0.1, 0.8
Mar  1 Tue  3    Moon 4.1° SE of Saturn; 22° from Sun; magnitudes -6.2 and 0.8
Mar  2 Wed       Ash Wednesday
Mar  2 Wed 16    Mercury 0.67° SE of Saturn; 23° from Sun
Mar  2 Wed 17:37 New Moon

In our sky scene, the symbols for the planets are sized for brightness like the stars, except that those for Saturn and Venus are pictures, exaggerated 150 times in size, to show the current attitude of Saturn rings and Venus’s crescent. The figures beside the Moon’s dates are its “age”: -54 means 54 hours before the instant of New Moon.

Politically incorrect department

The Audubon Society is being urged to change its name because the naturalist John James Audubon (1785-1851) owned slaves. And the months July and August will be renamed because Julius Caesar and Octavius Augustus Caesar owned slaves.  On the analogy of September, October, etc. (“seventh, eighth,” etc.” in Roman times), July and August will become Quintember and Sextember.

Actually, though I don’t agree with all demolitions of historic names and statues, I agree that for Audubon, a particularly bad defender of slavery, his name on his great book of bird paintings is commemoration enough.

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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.  Or you can click ‘Refresh’ to get the latest version.

This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.