Moon, Antares, Saorge

The Moon will pass close north of the red star Antares, during October 18.

See the end note about enlarging illustrations.

By sunset in America, the slender young Moon will already be east of the star.

Antares will have been occulted (hidden), for a band of the northern hemisphere of Earth, as shown in this diagram from the “Occultations” section of Astronomical Calendar 2023.

The occultation happens mostly in daylight, and is observable in after-sunset twilight only in a part of the Middle East.

Guitar in the Alpes Maritimes

Ian Dicks complied with my request to give us a link to his beautiful video by means of a comment on “A Modern Arion,” but you may not have seen it there, so here is the link again:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/mZf6E8vMbZ9hLBoH8

The music was a blues improvisation. The mountainous location is a place called Saorge, in southern France close to the Italian border.

I add that the valley may be the one that reaches the sea at Menton, to which I was once taken on a school journey. There was a flood at the time, and bodies were washed out to sea, perhaps down this valley. And that the local dialect, called Royasc, is one of those that are gradations between French and Italian, or, more exactly, between the Occitan of southern France and the Ligurian of the northern Italian coast.

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

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” or “Open image in new tab”, 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.