The four-planet crowd in the dawn twilight is better placed for south-hemisphere observers (as noted by our commenter Roberto in Australia) because the ecliptic where it crosses the celestial equator in this region of Pisces, the “fishes,” stands almost vertically from the horizon, and so do the planets and the Moon in their travels along the ecliptic.
See the end note about enlarging illustrations. Arrows through the moving bodies – including asteroid Vesta and comet C/2025 R3 PANSTARR – show their movement (against the starry background) from 2 days earlier to 2 days later. Saturn is exaggerated 150 times in size, to show the current attitude of its rings. The Moon is exaggerated 4 times in size.
Pegasus the flying horse, who notoriously appears upside-down for the northern hemisphere, is right-way-up for the southern.
Giving the Fish
“Giving the fish” was a slang phrase in 17th century Holland for putting people down. Frans Hals is now a somewhat under-rated painter – given the fish – compared with his younger contemporary Rembrandt, but I like the dashing hasty success, the “bravura,” of his brushwork.
We went to the Hals exhibition at London’s National Gallery in December 2023. This is the lower part of the Hals portrait of Pieter Cornelis van der Mersch, a Leiden citizen who had the reputation of being an expert at giving the fish. (The painting is now in the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh.) An inscription on the picture says “Who wants one?” – the joker is offering you a fish in a basket, meaning “Get ready to be made fun of.”
As usual, what interests me is the order of construction, the planned sequence of actions by the hand wielding the paint-laden brush.
The dark background. Then the man, except for the completion of his arm and hand in the foreground. Then the basket, though I’m not sure any of it can still be seen; then the fish. Then the straw, many strokes of a darker color alternating with narrower strokes of lighter color on top of them. Then the hand, its outline and fill. Then many carefully-lucky strokes to bring out its veins and facets. Then the sleeve.
Oh, and a string around the straw.
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The diagram is yesterday for me in Sydney. The Moon and Mercury looked pretty and the horizon size illusion made their separation look like 8 degrees instead of 6 and a bit.. Got a good view of Mercury, Mars and Saturn on Tue 14th but at 5.20 am, an hour before sunrise. So I will have to recant on my mistaken POV two posts ago about seeing them at 45 mins before sunrise. The sky is too bright. As for similar triple conjunctions of these 3 planets if I can be loose with the term, it is a long time between drinks. From 1980 to 2040 a trawl thru Heavens Above shows no tight clustering for the last 46 years. But in 2036 they cluster even closer than this year in the evening sky 22 degrees from the sun. And in 2040 all 5 naked eye planets dance in September after sunset.
GLENN, thanks for highlighting a great planetary event in 2040 ~ I love planet gatherings! On September 1, 2040, here is what that gathering will look like:
http://www.starvergnuegen.com/astropix/2040/2040_09_01_planets_chart_a.html
That year will see the next great Jupiter – Saturn conjunction, a reprise of their performance in 1980. I will be 77 years old then but I hope to still be taking pictures of these kinds of alignments LOL. This particular gathering in Sept 2040 will be difficult from the northern hemisphere, but much easier from where you and Roberto observe.
Some of these planetary “parades” were listed in
https://www.universalworkshop.com/2022/06/06/planet-parade/
but I need to work on this program to make it coearer.
Cloudy this morning (17 April) in Sydney. No great visibility of the planet crowd.