Morningstar

Posted by: Ardbeg10y on 27 December 2018

I travelled this morning from The Netherlands to Luxembourg. Left home around 6 - driving South. All the way from my home in the middle of my country to Liege in Belgium, I saw clearly a morningstar in the South East. I believe it is Venus - read that somewhere. I'm now 40, but never saw it so clear. Does these things come with age?

It was breathtakenly nice to see - especially in these days after Christmas. I believe Betlehem is in the South East too ... though my name is not Balthsasar, Casper or Melchior :-).

Any other nice observations in the sky?

Posted on: 27 December 2018 by Hook

With it snowing and ice raining here in Minneapolis, I can only ask:  what sky?  

Posted on: 27 December 2018 by Ardbeg10y

Well, at least you have a White Christmas then! Something we can only dream of here ...

Posted on: 27 December 2018 by thebigfredc

Venus was fantastic around sunrise in the UK the week before Xmas. No wonder the supposedly wise men followed it for a while.

Anyway, the pedigree name of our Norfolk Terrier, now deceased, was Gretchin Morning Star.

Ray

Posted on: 27 December 2018 by count.d

Got excited about investing when I saw this. At least it wasn’t about Bitcoin.

Posted on: 28 December 2018 by Rich 1

Good crisp clear skies make venus a wonderful site whether it's the morning or evening star. Under good conditions and if you know where to look (there's some good apps out there especially if you have a phone with a built in cumpass) you can see it in broad daylight. It's thought that Napoleon could see it in broad daylight on one of his campaigns and considered it a good omen. Rich 

Posted on: 28 December 2018 by ursus262

Also known as Luik

Posted on: 28 December 2018 by Ardbeg10y
ursus262 posted:

Also known as Luik

Indeed. I lost Venus in Luik - a proper place to get lost!

Posted on: 28 December 2018 by TOBYJUG

Mars has been very visible for a good while now .  You can spot it as it follows closely with the moon.  Maybe not so much now as the night sky has been very poor.

Posted on: 28 December 2018 by Rich 1

Orion's sword nebula, in the southern sky (UK) is just about visible to the naked eye. A good pair of binoculars will show you a decent smudge if you can hold them steady. They'll also show some details on the moon, so long as it's not a full moon, try looking at the terminator, the dividing line between the sun lit side and the night side. An interesting picture can be obtained simply by pointing your camera attached to a tripod with a wide angle lens in the general direction of the North star (polaris) and leaving the shutter open for several minutes. Try to have something interesting in the foreground as the long exposure will allow you to see it. The picture will show numerous star trails as arcs with the centre star, polaris just as a dot. Happy experimenting. Rich 

Posted on: 28 December 2018 by TOBYJUG

If you look very closely with the third eye you can witness a solar system with many planets with life passing through ours and with many colliding with earth itself - but on another frequency of reality.

Posted on: 29 December 2018 by Rich 1

Toby, you're getting really deep now. Still, some scientists think there's many page's of different realities, and our universe is just one page of many. On other pages the laws of physics are slightly different and those universes evolve differently. Stephen Hawking has written some wonderful essays on this subject. Rich