Manufacturology

Celestial jogging experience

After a cou­ple of won­der­ful spring–like days that caused much of the abun­dant snow to melt, there was a back­lash today with almost 20cm of snow falling. Despite this, I decided to make another attempt to get going with my jog­ging, which has more or less been on hold since last fall.

I went out at about 7 pm just after sun­set, and chose my usual 7.8km win­ter round.

After a few min­utes I was run­ning west­wards towards the direc­tion where the sun had set shortly before. Then, in the still bright sky straight ahead of me, I saw a very bright evening star. I realised that it must be Venus.

Slightly to the left, and at about 45 degrees alti­tude, I had the wax­ing moon.

I then turned my head upwards, and I could see Mars high up above, slightly behind me. The planet is brighter than all the stars sur­round­ing it, and has a clearly vis­i­ble slightly red colour.

And, look­ing around, I saw another bright star south­wards on my left hand side. Although I was uncer­tain, I first thought that this might be Jupiter or Saturn.

In a sud­den moment I had an intense feel­ing of being a part of a larger whole, run­ning on the sur­face of one planet among many. I had a sen­sa­tion that, if I wanted, I could take one giant step off the sur­face of earth and con­tinue out in space.

As soon as I got back home I pulled out my 150mm (6″) Sky­watcher dob­son­ian tele­scope from the garage and pointed it towards the sky. From where I stood, I could see Mars and, between the trees on my back­yard, the star that I sus­pected to be Jupiter or Sat­urn. I could see Mars clearly, but I found that the other sus­pected planet was actu­ally a bright star. It was now get­ting darker and other stars started to appear, but the ones sur­round­ing the bright planet (that turned out to be a star), were hid­den behind the trees sur­round­ing my house.

Sky chart for the Bor­länge area at the time of my “celes­tial jog­ging expe­ri­ence”. Click to enlarge.

When I got inside I took a look at the sky chart, and realised that the bright star that I thought was a planet was actu­ally Betel­geuse. The other stars in Orion were too dim to be seen at the time of my jog, and the con­stel­la­tion was hid­den behind the trees as seen from my gar­den. Nev­er­the­less, my “celes­tial jog­ging expe­ri­ence” was worth remembering.

P.S. Look­ing at the sky chart, I can see that I should be able to see Sat­urn in the east­ward direc­tion if I go out­side to my scope right now. D.S.

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