Strange thing in sky, redux
The thing I saw in the sky last night (night of July 20, 2010) is back, sedately, serenely proceeding west again at a steady one degree every four minutes. As of 12:29:46 a.m. PDT, July 22, 2010, it is about 25-30 degrees west of the eastern horizon (well, the Cascades are in the way of that, but you know what I mean), just about due east, maybe a tad north of east, which would give it a celestial latitude of at least 40 degrees north. That rules out any planet or the Moon, and anyway, the Moon is now well west of the meridian.
Out of curiosity, just to see what was in the sky that might account for it, I ran up an astrological chart for that date, time, and my map coordinates (the latter are 122 degrees 21' west longitude, 47 degrees 43' north latitude). This wasn't to do any astrological predictions; my astrological software simply generates a map of the sky from the data I give it, and on that map it shows where the Sun, Moon, planets, and some asteroids are in the sky at the time for which the chart is calculated.
On that map, Jupiter stands at 3 degrees 24' Aries in the 12th house, while the Ascendant stands at 8 degrees 55' Taurus. That means that for the moment the chart was cast, Jupiter was 35 degrees 31' west of the eastern horizon. Jupiter's declination at that moment was 0 degrees 5' north, that is, 0 degrees 5' north of the celestial equator.
Jupiter is big and bright, the second brightest object in the solar system if you don't count the Sun and Moon (by that reckoning, Venus is the first brightest, but Venus is now under the Earth and won't rise for another 10 hours or so, so it can't be Venus). So it's possible what I'm seeing out there to the east is Jupiter. But Jupiter should be farther south than that enigmatic point of light in the sky is now -- I think.
At that moment, Neptune was high in the eastern sky, much higher (and thus farther west) than Jupiter, standing at about 10:30 o'clock to one looking due south. Uranus, on the other hand, was standing at 0 degrees 29' Aries, just three degrees farther west than Jupiter and not much higher in the chart. Uranus can be seen on clear nights from Earth with the naked eye -- sometimes, and only when the night sky isn't too smoggy or filled with smoke, and the viewer has good vision (whether with corrective lenses or not). Neptune can't be seen at all with the naked eye. So it wasn't either of them.
So maybe it's Jupiter, after all. There's nothing else to account for it. I guess.
Out of curiosity, just to see what was in the sky that might account for it, I ran up an astrological chart for that date, time, and my map coordinates (the latter are 122 degrees 21' west longitude, 47 degrees 43' north latitude). This wasn't to do any astrological predictions; my astrological software simply generates a map of the sky from the data I give it, and on that map it shows where the Sun, Moon, planets, and some asteroids are in the sky at the time for which the chart is calculated.
On that map, Jupiter stands at 3 degrees 24' Aries in the 12th house, while the Ascendant stands at 8 degrees 55' Taurus. That means that for the moment the chart was cast, Jupiter was 35 degrees 31' west of the eastern horizon. Jupiter's declination at that moment was 0 degrees 5' north, that is, 0 degrees 5' north of the celestial equator.
Jupiter is big and bright, the second brightest object in the solar system if you don't count the Sun and Moon (by that reckoning, Venus is the first brightest, but Venus is now under the Earth and won't rise for another 10 hours or so, so it can't be Venus). So it's possible what I'm seeing out there to the east is Jupiter. But Jupiter should be farther south than that enigmatic point of light in the sky is now -- I think.
At that moment, Neptune was high in the eastern sky, much higher (and thus farther west) than Jupiter, standing at about 10:30 o'clock to one looking due south. Uranus, on the other hand, was standing at 0 degrees 29' Aries, just three degrees farther west than Jupiter and not much higher in the chart. Uranus can be seen on clear nights from Earth with the naked eye -- sometimes, and only when the night sky isn't too smoggy or filled with smoke, and the viewer has good vision (whether with corrective lenses or not). Neptune can't be seen at all with the naked eye. So it wasn't either of them.
So maybe it's Jupiter, after all. There's nothing else to account for it. I guess.