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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Bill Ritchie
Date: 2018 Nov 26, 11:05 +0000
Bright Venus again
From: Antoine Couëtte
Date: 2018 Nov 13, 23:43 -0800Lady Venus back to morning skies !
This morning (Nov 14th, 2018, by 06:15 GMT) it was dazzingly bright seen from home ! Next to another rather Bright Body.
Question 1 - An easy one : name of the Bright Body next to Venus (i.e. within 1.5°) ? Spica (Alpha Virginis)
Question 2 : More difficult : Which day and at what time time (UT or even TT) will the geocentric angular distance between Venus Center and the Bright Body center be minimum ? Nov. 14th, 2018 by 20h10m TT *** (or by 20h09m UT), i.e. just a few hours after the time this post was published.
Question 3 : What will be the geocentric angular distance between them, then ? 1°14.8' ****
Enjoy !
Kermit
COMMENT: Interesting exercise since Venus earlier closed up from Spica without catching or overtaking this Star. In other words Venus "stopped short" of Spica at a distance of slightly over 1° as earlier indicated. The distance between them has kept increasing afterwards.
Such environment (Venus earlier heading "dead on" onto Spica but "stopping short" of this star) is [much] more difficult to accurately compute than if Venus had simply "overtaken" Spica.
*** 20h10m23.7s TT with an uncertainty of a few minutes of time (maybe up to 10 or even15 minutes of time ?) given the Bodies apparent geocentric configuration,
**** and a Body Center to Body Center geocentric distance of 1°14'46.9" (+/- 4")
Antbody to comment and/or to confirm these results ?
Kermit
