(Viewed 913 times)

[Centaur]

Mother Nature is set to begin choreographing a marvelous dance of the planets throughout this summer. You’ll be able to watch the performance evolve over several months in the western sky after sunset. The cast will include the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars and Saturn along with the bright stars Regulus and Spica.

I’ve created a 95-second animation demonstrating their interplay over a period of 95 days. It can be seen by going to my astronomical webpage at www.curtrenz.com/astronomical then clicking the link there to the Dance of the Planets.

Here are my predicted closest geocentric angular approaches among the involved celestial bodies. PA is the position angle of the first mentioned body relative to the second one as measured counterclockwise from celestial north.

July 10 at 06:50 CDT
Venus at PA 23° will appear 1.00° from Regulus

July 25 at 08:21 CDT
Mars at PA 205° will appear 0.15° from Beta Virginis

July 27 at 15:44 CDT
Mercury at PA 207° will appear 0.28° from Regulus

July 31 at 01:25 CDT
Mars at PA 205° will appear 1.76° from Saturn

August 8 at 05:35 CDT
Venus at PA 209° will appear 2.73° from Saturn

August 18 at 23:36 CDT
Venus at PA 219° will appear 1.88° from Mars

August 31 at 21:02 CDT
Venus at PA 210° will appear 1.00° from Spica

September 5 at 17:11 CDT
Mars at PA 23° will appear 2.07° from Spica

Your photos and descriptions of this set of events would be welcome additions to this thread!

[Paulie pchris00]

This is last night's attempt to capture Venus and Regulus in Union Pier, Michigan, but my camera just won't pick up Regulus.





Regulus was to the lower left of Venus.