Special De-slivery
For a change, I fully expected to see this month's sliver moon (my fourth consecutive lunar month with at least one viewing-a new record!), and I did. We've had reasonably clear skies the last week, and don't expect any rain anytime soon. The only danger was that the horizon might be so hazy with soot and moisture built up in the warm, still air as to reduce the sliver moon to a fuzzy yellow arc.
With Venus still prominent in the evening sky, blazing away with a magnitude of -4.4, the two-day sliver moon, once again, is not the most unusual or visually pleasing celestial event early in the lunar month. On Monday, the Moon will briefly occult Venus around 11:06 AM EDT, (15:06 GMT), and then, 17 hours later, will barely miss Saturn, with closest approach at 4:03 AM EDT Tuesday (8:03 GMT). As usual, drat it all, neither event will be visible from North America or Europe. But in a plot of the planetary motions in the sky, as viewed from Cleveland, the Moon appears to perform a graceful slalom around and between the two planets (right; click for larger version). The curve in the Moon's path relative to the stars, and its apparent speeding up and slowing down (each dot represents one hour of motion; the Moon travels across the starry background much more quickly than either planet) is caused by the Earth's rotation.
With Venus still prominent in the evening sky, blazing away with a magnitude of -4.4, the two-day sliver moon, once again, is not the most unusual or visually pleasing celestial event early in the lunar month. On Monday, the Moon will briefly occult Venus around 11:06 AM EDT, (15:06 GMT), and then, 17 hours later, will barely miss Saturn, with closest approach at 4:03 AM EDT Tuesday (8:03 GMT). As usual, drat it all, neither event will be visible from North America or Europe. But in a plot of the planetary motions in the sky, as viewed from Cleveland, the Moon appears to perform a graceful slalom around and between the two planets (right; click for larger version). The curve in the Moon's path relative to the stars, and its apparent speeding up and slowing down (each dot represents one hour of motion; the Moon travels across the starry background much more quickly than either planet) is caused by the Earth's rotation.