Event Date: January 14th
Time: 6:00 PM
Brief
Yesterday, I showed Mars still north of the Sun, and as mentioned, I will revisit its plots today, covering the last two months: both celestial and local. The former is shown below followed by the latter.
When I last showed the celestial, the increment markers were gradually spreading out, as the planet has moved faster in prograde motion each month. For the local, showing the position of Mars each day at the exact same time, we saw the improving geometry of the Sun lead to a "trough" for its horizon-sinking path. As the Sun has started to set a little later each evening for the last 5 weeks and especially at a faster rate now, we are starting to see Mars local path move "up" slightly...yet only for so long. Take a look, as I have hidden the horizon for both. While the celestial is a full zoom-out, the local is a 2x zoom-in.
 |
click on images to enlarge: courtesy of Starry Night Pro Plus, version 6.4.3, by Simulation Curriculum Corp.
|
Detailed
Interesting? As a reminder, the celestial path is the planet's movement against the stars-- either west to east for prograde, or the other direction for retrograde. At the time of opposition, Mars was moving near its fastest in retrograde, and reached stationary a few weeks later. As a result of this movement, or lack-thereof at one moment for stationary, it has only been recent months that we have seen Mars start to play "tag" with the Sun; that game ends in a couple of months, and Mars will not be easily visible again to the eye until the 2nd half of the year. The planet's next opposition is during the first half of next year. As for the local path, it is an interesting one, as the geometry of the western sky will continue to improve until early March. Until then, try to spot the planet, even though binoculars will liekly be required to see it as more than just a small dot!
No comments:
Post a Comment