And no where did abide –
– to quote, probably not for the first time, the loveliest moment in Coleridge’s “Ancient Mariner.” The appearance of the Moon is the story’s turning point; it begins the saving of the mariner:
Softly she was going up
And a star or two beside.
Her beams bemocked the sultry main
Like April hoar-frost spread…
And at the sight of living creatures in the moonlit water and in the ship’s “red” shadow, a “spring of love” gushes in his heart and breaks his lonely despair.
The Moon is going up our western sky, past red Mars and the northernmost point on the ecliptic, toward its First Quarter stage on April 20. But this is the day-by-day change of position; minute by minute it is carried back down in the opposite direction as the sky rotates, and what the mariner watches is that motion, probably of the full Moon, up from the horizon in the east.
As for the frost, isn’t it more associated with winter? Heavy frost is, but if it comes in spring it is likely to be hoar-frost, the feathers of frozen dew reminiscent of “hoary” gray hair. I haven’t seen morning frost on the Syon meadows since March, but April can dip sharply back into cold; one time when I came over from America with my bicycle and rode from Gatwick airport to Warwick in the middle of England I was riding through a snow storm.
__________
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.
This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
When I went out in the back yard around astronomical dusk last night, Pollux and Castor were a lot lower in the western sky than I expected. Turns out I was looking at Mars and Beta Tauri. They were right where Pollux and Castor would be in two hours, and remarkably similar in color, brightness, separation, and orientation. The twins were hiding behind a tree, having a good laugh at my befuddlement.
That could be a whole topic: configurations of stars (and planets) mistaken for other configurations. Mars and El Nath – at this longitude in Mars’s orbit – mistaken for Pollux and Castor; the False Cross… Others?
Mars also needs to be in the right phase of his synodic period to appear about as bright as Pollux. At opposition Mars would look way too bright to be mistaken for Pollux.
Last night Mars had already moved far enough east along the ecliptic that the distance between Mars and Al Nath and their orientation were noticeably un-Geminid.
One pair of easily confused stars comes to mind: Polaris and Kochab. They’re about equally bright and in the same part of the sky. But if you use a bearing to Kochab as true north, you won’t get to Warwick.
Gatwick, despite the name of London Gatwick,is south of London about 30 minutes by non stop train and Warwick is south west of Birmingham.Polaris is due north so you’d overshoot and end up in Peterborough so suchlike! I’d use a map and the road signs assuming that this trip was done in the pre i phone era ? I like Xi,no not the leader of China but the star in Ursa Minor, and Eta,as they are about around 5.5 magnitude so they tell you roughly how light polluted your skies are.I’m guessing from Gatwick you can’t see them as it’s probably Bortle 7ish whereas Warwick,out of the town centre,you probably can as I’d guess it’s Bortle 5ish?
Yes Beta Taruri is one of those stars I’d never thought much about before.it can’t be far short of the first magnitude.Alnath or Elnath from the Arabic for butting or bull’s horns.it was also Gamma Auriga.130 light years away and a giant star so from our understanding it’s unlikely to have any inhabitable planets.i think that I originally thought it was Pollux and Castor I was looking at thinking strange that they are so low.
Thats so funny.. love it.
That’s a long way from Gatwick to Warwick!April is a very unpredictable month and this one has been cold but sunny a high pressure dragging down Artic air from the north east.a wonderful view of Mars above the Moon this evening with Alnath or Beta Tauri off to the west.