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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: David Pike
Date: 2025 Apr 26, 09:25 -0700
More thoughts
8. The position of Venus, Saturn, and the Moon suggest that the photographer took the shot and Frank picked up on it, because this was a special event. I.e. Venus, Saturn, and the Moon all appear within a five-degree circle in the sky. This occurs very rarely, but one such occasion was 25th April 2025. Also on this date, the Moons age is 26-27 days, which ties in with the photograph. Therefore, there is a very good chance that the photograph was taken somewhere at some time on 25th April 2025.
9. If the line though the Moon’s horns were to line up with a celestial sphere meridian, one could eyeball the air almanac to find at which time GHA Moon was a fraction less than GHA Venus on 25th April. Photographs 1 and 2 show how I calculated this. The time was 25th 01h 32m 48s. I was hoping that by comparing GHA with the fact that it was just getting light I might get longitude. However, the Moon receeds quickly and we are also in parallax country, so this time might be in error by an hour or two.
10. Trying to obtain the same thing plotting Venus’, Saturn’s, and the moon’s GHA v time UTC (Photo 3) led nowhere useful.
11. Measuring the angle between the line through the line through the Moon’s Horns and the vertical suggested latitude was close to either 56N or 34N. I never could work out which. Therefore, I started with Stellarium at Waddington at 53.10’N 000.32’W This showed promise but was too high, so I dropped to Greenwich Observatory. This was better but still too high. I wanted somewhere lower and a bit further east.
12. Puis je me suis dit : « Je parie que les Français ont un observatoire ancien similaire dont ils sont très fiers », alors j’ai déménagé à l’Observatoire de Paris, et je pense que c’est assez proche à l’heure 04.47 UTC. Qu’en pensez-vous Kermit. Dave le Brochet
