The Moon Pays a Spring Visit To Virgo (theguardian.com) 75
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.
Believe it or not, (Score:5, Informative)
the Moon "visits" every constellation along the ecliptic once every month. Amazing thing, periodic motion.
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Shhh, we're about to close a sales deal...
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I hear Qanon has been removed from Google Play, maybe /. can improve their deal outlook if they host the apps here instead.
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How is this even news!!!
In other news the sun will shine!
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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
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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
Re: Believe it or not, (Score:1)
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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.
Re: Believe it or not, (Score:1)
Nice, but not news (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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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.
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"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)
The Moon Pays a Spring Visit To Virgo
It's autumn you insensitive clod.
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Which way does the water go down your toilet again?
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I have an outhouse you insensitive clod!
I'm hoping this means.. (Score:2)
.. it's a really really really slow news day.
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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.
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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)
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.
Re:Here's hoping! (Score:4, Funny)
Good day to stay indoors. Beware of strangers!
Re: Here's hoping! (Score:2)
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You will be visited by a tall lady of the night seeking...oh wait, that is a whorescope....
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"All signs point to clamidya"
Hmmm... (Score:4, Funny)
Are they still going to be able call it Virgo? Moon you dirty dog.
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Sure, Selene is female.
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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.
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I heard of this Mastodon decentralized network. Then I read this on their website:
Mastodon is only one of at least a dozen different clients and servers that comprise the decentralized network called the fediverse Mastodon.social, the flagship instance of the fediverse, probably discriminates against racists, sexists and transphobes. Other instances don't. You can definitely find a home nomatter how blackpilled you are, somewhere on the fediverse. try another server [fediverse.space]
Unexpected (Score:2)
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.
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Newton was theist, and gave credit for the laws where it belongs.
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Yeah, and all that extra credit belongs to Leibniz.
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Well, I'd say currently, theist Heisenberg is on top.
But I'm flexible. Uncertainty seems to be the rule of the day.
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Interesting inadvertent psychological confession, there.
"Top" as in most recognized, most authoritative. But, I'll take your conjecture under advisement.
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You are such a dull, desperate troll. Do you need to endlessly prove it?
I mean, for as long as you are able, that is.
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Heisenberg's on top? I thought he was dead
It's hard to be sure since he's still in that box (or is he?).
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No, Heisenberg isn't.
Schrodinger is in the box dead and alive.
Heisenberg is either definitely inside the box with an unknown impulse, or with a known impulse, but maybe inside, maybe outside.
But this is only true in coordinate space and if you are an adept of the Kobenhavn sect.
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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.
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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
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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
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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
Re: Unexpected (Score:1)
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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)
These last months there's been very little from our solar system visible from New Zealand in the southern hemisphere. ,etc.
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
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]
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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.
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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.
Re: Feeling a bit left out down under just now (Score:1)
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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)
I was waiting on this. (Score:2)
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?
But what does it mean for my love-life? (Score:2)
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?
C'mon, spice it up a bit (Score:2)
Unless Moon is grabbing the Virgo by the Spica, nobody wants to hear it.
Moon loves Aldebaran more than any other star! (Score:2)
If you a
"Virgo the Virgin"? (Score:3)
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?
Cool stuff in Virgo (Score:2)
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
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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
Stations/Houses of the Moon ... (Score:2)
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,