Venus and Saturn?

"Chris L Peterson" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 03 Jul 2007 01:55:01 GMT, "John Nichols"
wrote:

Above?!?

When I observed them, Venus was above Saturn. Upstream, Matthew Ota's
picture also shows this relationship.

Color me confused.

I don't know what you were looking at, but Saturn has been above Venus
for a long time, it was above it on Saturday, and remains above it
tonight (Jul 2). Sometime tomorrow they will have the same altitude, and
then for a few weeks Venus will be higher.

Matthew's picture is clearly rotated. Check the images on Spaceweather,
such as this:
http://www.spaceweather.com/archive....h=07&year=2007
for examples of what you should have seen.

_________________________________________________
I really wish I had been able to take a picture of what I saw, but thanks,
Chris.

In article ,
"John Nichols" wrote:
"Chris L Peterson" wrote in message
.. .
On Tue, 03 Jul 2007 01:55:01 GMT, "John Nichols"
wrote:

Above?!?

When I observed them, Venus was above Saturn. Upstream, Matthew Ota's
picture also shows this relationship.

Color me confused.

I don't know what you were looking at, but Saturn has been above Venus
for a long time, it was above it on Saturday, and remains above it
tonight (Jul 2). Sometime tomorrow they will have the same altitude, and
then for a few weeks Venus will be higher.

Matthew's picture is clearly rotated. Check the images on Spaceweather,
such as this:
http://www.spaceweather.com/archive....h=07&year=2007
for examples of what you should have seen.

_________________________________________________
I really wish I had been able to take a picture of what I saw, but thanks,
Chris.

Both Matthew and I took pictures of what we saw, and our pictures
show that on both 30 June and 1 July, Venus and Saturn were less
than 50' apart. The closest approach was at about 8 AM PDT (15h UT)
on 1 July, about half way between Matthew's image and mine. At
closest approach, they were less than 40' apart.

By the way, my image is also rotated, about 53 degrees clockwise.
Saturn was 41'05" away about 15.6 degrees clockwise from straight up.

Rob Johnson
take out the trash before replying
to view any ASCII art, display article in a monospaced font

"John Nichols" wrote in message
...

"Chris L Peterson" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 03 Jul 2007 01:55:01 GMT, "John Nichols"
wrote:

Above?!?

When I observed them, Venus was above Saturn. Upstream, Matthew Ota's
picture also shows this relationship.

Color me confused.

I don't know what you were looking at, but Saturn has been above Venus
for a long time, it was above it on Saturday, and remains above it
tonight (Jul 2). Sometime tomorrow they will have the same altitude, and
then for a few weeks Venus will be higher.

snippage

I think I've figured this out. My focuser, which is a Vixen focuser, and
which is attached to a refractor, allows me to turn the eyepiece to observe
more comfortably. When I do, this of course rotates the image. When I
observe the Moon I keep this in mind and try to get a proper orientation.
With the planets I tend to forget, which must be what I did last Saturday.
This would explain why I saw them reversed from each other.

I had a look off my balcony at dusk last night (0500 UTC,
4 July) and found, as expected, that Venus and Saturn
were a lot farther apart.

While they were still comfortably in the field of my
7x50 binoculars, they were only just in the field of
my 20x80s.

Venus was a tiny fat crescent in the 20x80s, while
I could see the rings and globe of Saturn as well.
When the ring inclination was larger I could only
see Saturn as a yellow oval.

Laura Halliday VE7LDH "That's a totally illegal,
Grid: CN89mg madcap scheme. I like it!"
ICBM: 49 16.05 N 122 56.92 W - H. Pearce