Venus, Saturn, Jupiter

[altivo]

For those with an interest in the sky, and lucky enough to have a clear nighttime view:

We were enchanted just after sunset last night by the brilliance of Venus. If it's clear, you can't miss it. Extremely bright and high above the horizon if you face southwest.

I was sure it was Venus even without consulting any references, because nothing else shines like that (at least here.) Now, just shortly after Venus becomes visible, Jupiter appears as well and is also very bright though Venus easily outshines it. Face south and look up a little higher and a bit to the left, there it is.

If you wait a little longer, until more background stars appear, then imagine a line between Venus and Jupiter. About one quarter or so of the distance away from Jupiter and along that line, you will see Saturn a bit above (Northwards) of the line. Saturn is sometimes much brighter than it is right now, especially when it is located opposite the sun, but at the present it seems like a rather undistinguished star unless you have a telescope or binoculars handy. With those you can see the rings that are Saturn's earmarks.

The telescopic aid usually reveals at least a couple of Jupiter's moons as well, bright points close in to the planet itself, but I didn't check last night to see what was visible that way.

In any case, I can't recommend Venus highly enough. It's brilliant and a beautiful blue white color right now. Take a few minutes to look at it.

Comments

[altivo]

Found it on YouTube. Those lyrics are gonna be a challenge I think.

Oh yes, I remember Hale Bopp. Definitely the best and brightest comet I have seen. Even in the murk and light pollution of Chicago it was amazing.

Is there a recording of Dave Clement? The one on YouTube is Baardman himself I believe.

[hrrunka]

The YouTube I found is straight off the same CD as I have, by Sam. Dave is somewhat harder to find on the Net, partly because there are quite a few other Dave Clements out there. Decadent Dave throws up a few filk con hits, but no recordings. The Dandelion Wine website hasn't been updated in quite a while, and has too many broken links to be useful. They did record Solar Flare for their CD "The Face On Mars" over a decade ago, but the only sales link is to CDBaby, who appear to have stopped selling CDs back in 2020. The Dandelion Wine on Bandcamp is something completely different. However, it seems FilkCast has played Dandelion Wine's version of Solar Flare in Episode 78 back in January. The song starts at 43:47. ( http://filkcast.blogspot.com/2021/01/filkcast-episode-78-january-20-2021.html )

[altivo]

Wow, thanks for doing all that searching for me. I'll check the Filkcast link, but Sam's own version is clear enough and has the lyrics printed out. I need to feed one through Chordify to get the progression the lazy way and I can work from there.