Happy New Year!

I was at a friend's house drinking and playing nerdy games for new years eve. We stopped playing at about 3ish and just hung out for a while. When we got to about 5ish, one guy and I decided that we wanted to watch the sunrise. I got really excited because guess what I had been doing all night long?

If you guessed "looked at stars and planets" you're correct, lol. So I got all five of the planets in one night, but this time, without sleeping. Such a perfect way to start the new year!

But it kinda sucks to have to wait 12 hours between sunset and sunrise. I mentioned the naked eye planets site in the previous post. I was browsing around with that and found an app that shows where the planets are located along the ecliptic. I was delighted to discover that on March 5, not only will Mercury be furthest from the sun again, but Jupiter and Venus will also be close to eachother in the evening sky. Additionally, Mars and Saturn will both be near opposition, which means they will be rising about the same time that the sun sets. So it will be possible to see all of them in a single evening.

So three planets (two of them, the third and forth brightest objects in the sky) close together after sunset? Decided that this will require going to the beach at sunset, and that going to the beach will require a beach date. Because whats more romantic than beaches, sunsets, planets and stars? I'm really not sure.



I also found an awesome site for generating starcharts for particular locations and moments

http://www.fourmilab.ch/yoursky/


Evening sky on March 5, 2012 at 6:45 pm

Western horizon view on the same day

Night sky at midnight on March 6, 2012