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Originally posted by LeoVirgo
Many posters made suggestions about downloading the Stellarium.....I hope others take this advice. Its wonderful to be able to look up in just a few sec. time what you are looking at in the sky!
If you were to watch Jupiter over the course of its yearly appearance in our sky, you’d find that this planet generally moves eastward among the stars, something that can’t be seen on a single night, but is obvious over weeks and months. However, approximately every 13 months, Jupiter appears to change directions for about four months in what is called retrograde motion. In 2009, Jupiter’s retrograde motion started on June 15, and it ends today. This is not a real motion. Jupiter doesn’t really reverse direction, of course. Instead, it is an apparent motion caused by orbital geometry. In other words, it happens when our Earth and Jupiter – moving in their respective orbits around the sun – align just so. It’s like what happens when you in your fast car are passing a slower-moving car on the highway. The slow car can, for a time, appear to move backwards against the distant landscape. So, as seen from our faster-moving Earth, Jupiter at times appears to move backwards in front of the background stars. Generally, the best time to observe an outer planet like Jupiter is when the planet is retrograding. That’s because then it is roughly opposite the sun in Earth’s sky. This causes it to be brighter (think of it as full like the full moon), and be visible longer at night. Now that its retrograde motion has ended, Jupiter will seem to slip closer to the setting sun each evening. Although it will be visible for several more months, now is the best time to observe it.
Originally posted by Genus
I only bring it up on a big what if...Since NASA is known for tampering...what if they doctored all their charts to say that an object thought of as planet x would be jupiter, venus, sirious etc. when they could be in other parts of the sky? Not too likely but still an idea...
Originally posted by LeoVirgo
reply to post by Genus
Still today, the Mayan calendars predict the path of the planets perfectly.
Originally posted by susp3kt
I was under the impression that the north star/morning star that we always see in the sky was in fact Venus. Is this right, or am I very mistaken?
Originally posted by Genus
If this brown dwarf was so close by now, wouldn't we be able to see it? The size alone, even without light, should make it visible.
Originally posted by upnorthtrip
Originally posted by habfan1968
Um we have seen Jupiter and Venus for hundreds of years in our solar system so why are we seeing it this bright now but not before?
Yes,why is that!
That's the main question.