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Moon

The Moon Pays a Spring Visit To Virgo (theguardian.com) 75

Posted by msmash from the something-to-watch dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: The moon visits one of the spring constellations this week by traveling through the faint constellation of Virgo, the virgin. On 1 and 2 June, our natural satellite will pass close to Virgo's only bright star, Spica. Memorise its position and then return in the days to come to pick out the constellation's other, fainter stars. Spica is one of the 20 brightest stars in the night sky, located at a distance of about 250 light years. A blue giant star, containing around 10 times the Sun's mass, it is more than 20,000 times more luminous than our star.
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The Moon Pays a Spring Visit To Virgo More

The Moon Pays a Spring Visit To Virgo

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  • Believe it or not, (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mr. Dollar Ton ( 5495648 ) on Monday May 25, 2020 @10:31PM (#60104284)

    the Moon "visits" every constellation along the ecliptic once every month. Amazing thing, periodic motion.

    • Something Ms. Mash will never experience again after her sex change operation, erm, zhey're sex change operation...

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Shhh, we're about to close a sales deal...

      • I hear Qanon has been removed from Google Play, maybe /. can improve their deal outlook if they host the apps here instead.

    • How is this even news!!!

      In other news the sun will shine!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kbahey ( 102895 )

      the Moon "visits" every constellation along the ecliptic once every month. Amazing thing, periodic motion.

      No, not just once.

      It is more often that the moon stays for two nights in one constellation.

      Think of it: the lunar synodic month is 29.5. About 1.5 or 2 days of these the moon is invisible. So, that leaves 28 days, and there are 12 constellations. So it is 2.3 days per constellation on average, and varies depending on constellation (some are just narrower than others), and where the moon is relative to t

      • It sounds like you're disagreeing with Mr. Doller Ton, but I'm having a hard time understanding the disagreement. He said the moon visits each constellation in the ecliptic once per month. Your numbers basically agree with that, with each "visit" averaging 2.3 days. The only disagreement I can think of is that 28 (or 29.5) days is slightly shorter than a 30 or 31 day month, so it will be in the same constellation at the beginning and end of the month.

        Also, the moon is not invisible at any time when it's

      • So, that leaves 28 days, and there are 12 constellations. So it is 2.3 days per constellation on average, and varies depending on constellation (some are just narrower than others), and where the moon is relative to the ecliptic.

        Except......there are probably 13 [wikipedia.org] constellations, so more like 2.15 days.

      • Just because the moon spends two nights in a constellation doesnt mean it visited it twice. It never left. It was there all day as well.

  • Nice, but not news (Score:4, Informative)

    by Geoffrey.landis ( 926948 ) on Monday May 25, 2020 @10:33PM (#60104290) Homepage

    A nice post. I do like encouraging people to look at the sky, but this is not news in any way. The moon travels around the ecliptic once every 28 1/2 days.

    What is news is that the moon, Mercury, and Venus have been prominent in the west the last few days. It's hard to get a good view of Mercury, since it's usually so low in the sky; catch a view of it before it sinks back down into the sunset.

    • Not only that but if this is "news" for someone telling them to memorize the position of the bright star near the moon is likely to result in them memorizing it as the bright star near the moon which is not helpful.

      • memorizing it as the bright star near the moon which is not helpful.

        It will be helpful in teaching them that the moon's position amongst the stars is not fixed.

    • "A nice post. I do like encouraging people to look at the sky, but this is not news in any way. "

      News for astrology nerds, stuff that matters to morons.

  • The Moon Pays a Spring Visit To Virgo (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25, 2020 @10:44PM (#60104308)

    The Moon Pays a Spring Visit To Virgo

    It's autumn you insensitive clod.

  • .. it's a really really really slow news day.

    • Okay, fine. You've made some archetypal thread enlivening obligatory.

      Jesus said, "Do not worry from dawn to dusk and from dusk to dawn about what you (plur.) will wear.
      --Thomas 36

      Amazingly, I still have no challenges on orthodoxy to triangulate with. Hm. Have to ask the virgin about it.

    • Hey it's lockdown news, which can be, like this post, millions of years old. I look in the big city newspaper and it's three quarters covid19 news, because mostly people aren't out fucking doing anything. So a repost of something that's happened 1.2 billion times in the last 100 million years since the biggest dinosaurs were stomping around is at least not covid19 news, I'll take it.

  • Here's hoping! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Brett Buck ( 811747 ) on Monday May 25, 2020 @11:06PM (#60104364)

    Given the current state of affairs, maybe someone can post a daily horoscope, so we know whether or not our signs are favorable or not.

          That seems like the obvious extrapolation of the current level of intellectual thought we have here.

  • Hmmm... (Score:4, Funny)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Monday May 25, 2020 @11:26PM (#60104418)

    Are they still going to be able call it Virgo? Moon you dirty dog.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      Sure, Selene is female.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dumuzi ( 1497471 )

        But Mars was just in Virgo the other night.
        and Jupiter was in Virgo for most of the month of August 2016
        and Neptune was in Virgo for a few years back in the dirty thirties. Weirdly at the same time as Jupiter (Neptune's brother) and Mars (Jupiter's son) at some points.
        I don't think Virgo is fooling anyone.
        Everyone thought the ancients were using the constellations to know when to plant crops and such, but it was just their porn.

  • For shame, I for one was sure that this time, unlike the 9,451,672 other times, it would do something different. But nooo it keeps following that Newton guy's laws, almost like the Moon is part of a cult. It's time for an intervention.

    • Newton was theist, and gave credit for the laws where it belongs.

      • Yeah, and all that extra credit belongs to Leibniz.

        • Well, I'd say currently, theist Heisenberg is on top.

          But I'm flexible. Uncertainty seems to be the rule of the day.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dumuzi ( 1497471 )

        But it turns out Newton (and his god by proxy since Newtons gave him credit) was wrong and Einstein's theory of gravity is much more consistent with observations.
        Einstein gave credit where it belongs, he was an atheist.

        • Einstein described his "private opinion" of quantum physics in one of the 1945 letters by referencing a phrase that he had already made famous: "God does not play dice with the universe." In the letter, he wrote: "God tirelessly plays dice under laws which he has himself prescribed."

          At best, Einstein was inconsistent on the point. [livescience.com]

          But, can you go ahead and be able to think coherently? Whether Newtonian mechanics is as precise or not has no bearing on where the credit belongs. And, why you say "where it bel

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dumuzi ( 1497471 )

            You missed my coherent thought, perhaps your rage at my blasphemy got in the way?
            Credit indeed belongs nowhere, there are no gods and giving credit to an imaginary being is rather irrational, but the less accurate something is the more correct it is to assign credit to such imaginary beings, may as well assign wrong credit to a wrong idea after all.
            But I would gnot expect a believer in the book of Thomas to make sense of my plain meaning. I am sure your brain is too busy running mental gymnastics around the

            • Oh, no, God existing is a fact. You'll claim otherwise, of course, and you'll be wrong.

              Of course you don't understand Gnosticism, you don't Know. That's what the word means, and you being utterly ignorant, of course not.

              But glad that, before evolution eliminates you, you came back, so we could be clear that this, is arguably the most brain-dead statement ever made.

              But it turns out Newton (and his god by proxy since Newtons gave him credit) was wrong

              Like, if the creation of the nuclear bomb credited to the Manhattan Project was imprecisely described by someone crediting them, that means the

          • Einstein quite explicitly stated more than once he did not believe in a personal god. He was an athiest. When he spoke of god he was referring to what most people call nature.

            • I decided that regardless of what your words directly say, you actually mean something entirely else.

              And what you said instead is wrong. Easy enough.

              As I said, inconsistent. He was good a physics. He was not good at either philosophy of science or political thought, as his writings on the latter (pro-Judaism, which is a consistency problem if you are atheist) demonstrated.

  • Feeling a bit left out down under just now (Score:3)

    by seoras ( 147590 ) on Monday May 25, 2020 @11:40PM (#60104430)

    These last months there's been very little from our solar system visible from New Zealand in the southern hemisphere.
    Venus just after sun set for a bit and then it too disappears.
    I've a friend who's big into astrology who was making big noises to me late last year about 2020 being a pivotal year globally, not seen stars aligned like this since the last world wars, fall of empires, etc ,etc.
    Well bugger me if she wasn't on to something after all!
    If star alignment, and by that I refer to their current positions visible only in the northern hemisphere, is what is raining down the karma of Covid19 I'm happy to -not- see any of those celestial bodies for the time being.
    Another day of no new CV19 cases in NZ and only 22 active cases remaining. [health.govt.nz]

    • Wut? "Only" Venus? How about Mercury in the evening, and Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, very visible with with a nekkid eye in the mornings? You can see all the 5 "classical" planets this May, no reason to complain.

      There are also a bunch of dimmer Solar system objects to watch with a small telescope, Neptune (and, with a bigger scope, Pluto) from the planets (and ex-planets) for example.

      Lift your eyes from that chart and look at the sky, baby.

      You'll be amazed.

      • Wut? "Only" Venus? How about Mercury in the evening,

        Did you miss the part where he said he was from the southern hemisphere?

        Mercury is in the north right now, and it's winter down below, so it's probably not visible in the sunset skyglow.

        and Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, very visible with with a nekkid eye in the mornings?

        Yeah, they should be visible in the southern hemisphere in the mornings.

        • The planets dont alternate in the north or south. They follow the same path as the sun in the sky. If youre between the arctic circles and theyre visible at night in the northern hemisphere, theyre also visible at night in the southern hemisphere. Just as the sun is visible in both hemispheres every day.

          • If the Earth's axis didn't have a tilt, that would be true.
            But it does. That means that the angle of the ecliptic to the horizon differs from northern to southern hemisphere, which puts Mercury more into the sunset sky glare in the south than the North.

  • Also, the sun rose in the east today. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Michael_gr ( 1066324 ) on Tuesday May 26, 2020 @03:15AM (#60104748)
    I haven't seen an article about it for some reason. I'm counting on Slashdot to keep me updated in all matters astronomical.

  • Apparently this means that I am luckier today than any other day of the year and that something good may happen to me. It also means that Msmash has lost his mind and that isolation orders have taken a severe mental toll on its ability to understand what the fuck belongs on Slashdot.

    I do wish it gets better. Sidenote: Is "it" the correct pronoun to describe a poorly coded script pretending to be an AI in turn pretending to be an actual editor on a news site?

  • Will I hear from old friends?

    Is it a good time for a business venture?

    My birthday is Monday; will I finally lose my virginity to twins or be killed by a misplaced bull?

  • Unless Moon is grabbing the Virgo by the Spica, nobody wants to hear it.

  • There is a story in Indian mythology. The Moon has 27 wives, each wife is actually a constellation. Among all his wives he loves Rohini the most and other wives are jealous. Rohini is called Aldebaran in the west. Among all the constellations in the ecleptic, Moon does not osculate the primary stars in many of them. Among the stars/asterisms actually osculcated by the Moon it is Rohini/Aldebaran that gets most "visits". Thus was born the story of Moon loving Rohini/Aldebaran more than other stars.

    If you a

  • "Virgo the Virgin"? (Score:3)

    by skam240 ( 789197 ) on Tuesday May 26, 2020 @09:50AM (#60105490)

    The moon visits one of the spring constellations this week by traveling through the faint constellation of Virgo, the virgin.

    So the patron saint of slashdot?

  • The most distant object I've ever seen in a telescope, the quasar 3C273, is in Virgo. Two and a half billion light years away: when the photons hitting my retina started their journey multicellular life had not yet evolved on Earth. The next night (I was in the tropics) I sought out the nearest star and identified Proxima Centauri in a busy Milky Way field. Alpha Centauri is a really nice double in a telescope, BTW.

    Then there's the Virgo Cluster. Telescope fields full of silvery smudges and puffballs. Fun

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      I was traveling in Peru when Supernova 1987A was sighted. Since I didn't have the money to rent a vehicle I was limited to where I could travel and it wasn't visible in the city lights. Then one night traveling from Cusco to Puno the bus got a flat in 4,000 meter high La Raya pass in the middle of nowhere. A bunch of people got off to take the unscheduled bathroom break, while I continued over the hill beyond even the lights of the bus. It was easy to see in my binoculars, and I stayed out there until I

  • The moon has been observed for millennia to go into one of 28 set locations in the sky every day, or adjacent to said stations.

    These locations are known as stations or houses in Arab, Chinese and Indian lore.

    Some of these are asterisms (e.g. the Pleiades), others are stars (Aldebaran).

    Most of the bright star names we have today are corruption form Arabic when this was translated to Latin around 1100 CE or so.

    Spica happens to be one of the Latin names, from ear of wheat. But close to it you will see Zawija,

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