New Mars Forums

Palomar

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2002-05-30

Posts: 9,734

Re: Right next to Venus...

Uranus; a "close encounter"

*Pre-dawn April 17, 18 and 19.  Includes sky map.  I've got to see this.  Have lived around light pollution all my life and Uranus is at magnitude 6; that's THE unaided-eye limit.  Can't miss it though, what with Venus so close.  Terrific. 

Interesting bit of astronomy history in the article too.

The view through a backyard telescope should be splendid. Diamond-bright Venus has phases, and at the moment it resembles a tiny half-moon. Uranus, meanwhile, is a little blue-green disk, clearly a planet.

Set your alarm and see what the ancients missed.

Will do... 

--Cindy

---

We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)