Burns bright

In the morning sky, Mercury happens to be at its greatest latitude north of the ecliptic, but this doesn’t count for much because the little planet is not far out from its January 23 conjunction with the Sun. Venus and Mars, however, are brilliantly in view.

See the end note about enlarging illustrations.

The arrows through the moving bodies show their travel over 5 days. The crescent of the Moon is exaggerated 2 times in size and the crescent of Venus 150 times, to show its Moon-like appearance as it wheels away from us around the western half of its orbit.

Here is how the planets are now arranged:

In this space view from 15° north of the ecliptic plane, the planets’ paths are shown for January and February, with yellow sight-lines from Earth to the other planets at Jan. 25. The dashed line, with ram’s horns symbol, is the vernal equinox direction or “First Point of Aries,” the baseline for mapping the sky.

Robbie Burns night

Scots and all who relish free-spirited poetry celebrate his birth on January 25 in 1759. It’s recently been “revealed” from his correspondence that people advised him to shun Scots dialect so as not to limit his audience. He knew better, and we can celebrate that too.. “My luve is like a red red rose…Weel done, cutty sark!… wee sleekit cowin timrous beastie… For auld lang syne…”

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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.

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