06-30-2015, 06:24 PM
Glad you guys got to see it. I sat out with my neighbor watching things as the sky darkened, but never convinced myself I could see the moons. By the time it got dark enough the planets were in some high cloud/haze and soon after a brief shower put an end to the observing session.
Talking about neighbors, sometimes astronomers forget about the distances involved in the field, you kind of throw it aside because the physics is generally more interesting. But it's good to think about it every so often. So despite Venus and Jupiter appearing so close in the sky, and they are amongst our nearest neighbors (in cosmic terms, they are our close next door neighbors), Venus is currently about 50 million miles away and Jupiter requires a road trip being about 570 million miles away.
I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out how long it would take to pop over for a chat and a nice cup of tea...
Talking about neighbors, sometimes astronomers forget about the distances involved in the field, you kind of throw it aside because the physics is generally more interesting. But it's good to think about it every so often. So despite Venus and Jupiter appearing so close in the sky, and they are amongst our nearest neighbors (in cosmic terms, they are our close next door neighbors), Venus is currently about 50 million miles away and Jupiter requires a road trip being about 570 million miles away.
I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out how long it would take to pop over for a chat and a nice cup of tea...