Re: A rant from Bill Maher's recent show:

Frisbee® wrote:

I've been meaning to ask you something being I'm a complete astronomic IDOT...

Two or so days ago, when I stepped out on our carport shortly before sunrise, I became fascinated with what I was looking at. I'm legally blind, and night blind in particular, so it's very difficult for me to see stars at all. What I can generally see, however, I imagine are planets. That morning, when I was looking at what I supposed was Venus, it appeared like there was another planet (Mercury) or a star almost touching Venus at about the 7:00 position. I tried blocking out Venus to see if I could tell if it was some kind of optical illusion or not, and as far as I could tell, it did look like another planet/star very close to it, almost touching it. Was I seeing things or is (was) Mercury almost directly aligned with Venus?

Hmm, well, I certainly wont say you were seeing things, but there are no other planets or very bright stars near Venus in the sky right now. Could it have been an airplane? They can be bright and, if the plane is far away from you it can take a while to see that it's moving. Otherwise I'm not sure what it was, except maybe the UFO that came and picked up Kardex's brain after the Superbowl.

I truly envy those of you who can look up at a clear sky and see a field of stars all at once. Assuming that what I see on TV and movies is not an exaggeration, it's a beautiful sight that I wish I could see for real.

No doubt. Sorry to hear you can't see it. A dark sky -- a *truly* dark sky -- filled with stars is a thing of beauty.


--
chris
"my point? #@&*! you, that's my point." -- Bucky Katt
.

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