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

Quiet, Chris Mihos <hos@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> -- I'm
transmitting rage.

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.



OK, here's a question for our Astronomer Royal: why don't planets
twinkle?

I've been told from childhood that you can tell the planets because they
don't twinkle, and that stars do because the atmosphere makes their light
waver.

But the planets' light comes through that same atmosphere, so why _don't_
they twinkle as well?

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
James Schrumpf http://www.hilltopper.net

We Must Protect this Couch!
.

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