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The Coffee Shop

  • Thread starter The Fallen Angel
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RacingRodent said:
Things sometimes go a bit nuts
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No kidding?
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When a lad, I learned a few card tricks. Unfortunately, clumsy hands prevented me from ever doing much. But I learned the principles well.

Here is an interesting video of the classic "read your mind" card trick. It is particularly impressive since it is anonymous. How can he know what you are thinking?
For those who don't know how it works, I suggest just watching through. Pick a card and see what happens.
If you are good you will spot the trick. If you are not good - :spank:
View attachment My Movie.mp4
I will reveal the answer tomorrow.
 
This evening I took the opportunity to have a rare observation. For the first time since 45 years, I have seen the planet Mercurius.

Some of you must have noticed the very bright ‘star’ over the western horizon, after sunset, during last weeks. That ‘star’ is Venus. That planet offers lots of good sightings during the year, yet always in the evening or the early morning, since its orbit is closer to the sun than Earth’s. After weeks of good visibility, Venus is now nearing the sun (from our viewpoint) and will soon have disappeared from the evening skies for some time.

Mercurius is a different story. It stays further away from us, it has no bright reflecting atmosphere, it is much smaller than Venus,…. And it orbits much closer to the sun than Venus.

Visibilities of Mercurius are very rare, and always in difficult conditions. Its appearances are limited to either twilight or dawn, practically never in a dark sky. Even with reference points on a star map, its location is very difficult to find, since usually, the sky will be still too bright to have the reference points visible themselves. So my attempts to find it, when there was an opportunity the last years, all failed.

But this week, there is a reference point you cannot miss : the bright Venus. From our viewpoint, Mercurius passes in a close conjunction with its neigbouring planet. There were some broken clouds over the western horizon, and some contrails that had not dispersed, but around 10:30, with Venus standing in an open spot in the clouds, and then, with my binoculars, I saw it : a small ‘golden’ star like object, no more than two degrees below Venus! Ten minutes later, it was dark enough to see Mercurius with the naked eye. A faint star, but there, it stood.

The forthcoming days, Mercurius will move ‘upward’, with regard to the horizon, and pass closely along Venus. Get your binoculars too, and try to find it. You cannot miss, there is no other bright star in the neighbourhood to confuse with, and the goldish gleam is quite unique, no real star has it.

It is said, Copernicus never has seen Mercurius during his life. Imagine how Ancient astronomers, who had no such things as binoculars to their disposal, were nevertheless able to discern that small planet, with such a bad and rare visibility, in the evening or morning skies.

You find star maps, to help you, on this site :

 
Loxuru said:
This evening I took the opportunity to have a rare observation. For the first time since 45 years, I have seen the planet Mercurius.

Some of you must have noticed the very bright ‘star’ over the western horizon, after sunset, during last weeks. That ‘star’ is Venus. That planet offers lots of good sightings during the year, yet always in the evening or the early morning, since its orbit is closer to the sun than Earth’s. After weeks of good visibility, Venus is now nearing the sun (from our viewpoint) and will soon have disappeared from the evening skies for some time.

Mercurius is a different story. It stays further away from us, it has no bright reflecting atmosphere, it is much smaller than Venus,…. And it orbits much closer to the sun than Venus.

Visibilities of Mercurius are very rare, and always in difficult conditions. Its appearances are limited to either twilight or dawn, practically never in a dark sky. Even with reference points on a star map, its location is very difficult to find, since usually, the sky will be still too bright to have the reference points visible themselves. So my attempts to find it, when there was an opportunity the last years, all failed.

But this week, there is a reference point you cannot miss : the bright Venus. From our viewpoint, Mercurius passes in a close conjunction with its neigbouring planet. There were some broken clouds over the western horizon, and some contrails that had not dispersed, but around 10:30, with Venus standing in an open spot in the clouds, and then, with my binoculars, I saw it : a small ‘golden’ star like object, no more than two degrees below Venus! Ten minutes later, it was dark enough to see Mercurius with the naked eye. A faint star, but there, it stood.

The forthcoming days, Mercurius will move ‘upward’, with regard to the horizon, and pass closely along Venus. Get your binoculars too, and try to find it. You cannot miss, there is no other bright star in the neighbourhood to confuse with, and the goldish gleam is quite unique, no real star has it.

It is said, Copernicus never has seen Mercurius during his life. Imagine how Ancient astronomers, who had no such things as binoculars to their disposal, were nevertheless able to discern that small planet, with such a bad and rare visibility, in the evening or morning skies.

You find star maps, to help you, on this site :

Click to expand...

That is so awesome. I always feel awed and humbled that we can gaze upwards and see objects so many millions of kilometres distant. However I never thought to be able to locate Mercury, thank you for the tip.
 
Loxuru said:
This evening I took the opportunity to have a rare observation. For the first time since 45 years, I have seen the planet Mercurius.

Some of you must have noticed the very bright ‘star’ over the western horizon, after sunset, during last weeks. That ‘star’ is Venus. That planet offers lots of good sightings during the year, yet always in the evening or the early morning, since its orbit is closer to the sun than Earth’s. After weeks of good visibility, Venus is now nearing the sun (from our viewpoint) and will soon have disappeared from the evening skies for some time.

Mercurius is a different story. It stays further away from us, it has no bright reflecting atmosphere, it is much smaller than Venus,…. And it orbits much closer to the sun than Venus.

Visibilities of Mercurius are very rare, and always in difficult conditions. Its appearances are limited to either twilight or dawn, practically never in a dark sky. Even with reference points on a star map, its location is very difficult to find, since usually, the sky will be still too bright to have the reference points visible themselves. So my attempts to find it, when there was an opportunity the last years, all failed.

But this week, there is a reference point you cannot miss : the bright Venus. From our viewpoint, Mercurius passes in a close conjunction with its neigbouring planet. There were some broken clouds over the western horizon, and some contrails that had not dispersed, but around 10:30, with Venus standing in an open spot in the clouds, and then, with my binoculars, I saw it : a small ‘golden’ star like object, no more than two degrees below Venus! Ten minutes later, it was dark enough to see Mercurius with the naked eye. A faint star, but there, it stood.

The forthcoming days, Mercurius will move ‘upward’, with regard to the horizon, and pass closely along Venus. Get your binoculars too, and try to find it. You cannot miss, there is no other bright star in the neighbourhood to confuse with, and the goldish gleam is quite unique, no real star has it.

It is said, Copernicus never has seen Mercurius during his life. Imagine how Ancient astronomers, who had no such things as binoculars to their disposal, were nevertheless able to discern that small planet, with such a bad and rare visibility, in the evening or morning skies.

You find star maps, to help you, on this site :

Click to expand...

Oh yes! Venus has indeed been shining very brightly through my study window these evenings through the lockdown - and my star calendar says that Mecury has been climbing between Venus and the sunset, and Venus sinking lower, until, on the evening of 21st (tonight) they're close together, tomorrow evening Mercury will be higher. And if your binoculars are strong enough, you should see that Mercury is 'more than half full over towards the further side of the sun, and Venus is a thin crescent'.
 
Loxuru said:
This evening I took the opportunity to have a rare observation. For the first time since 45 years, I have seen the planet Mercurius.

Some of you must have noticed the very bright ‘star’ over the western horizon, after sunset, during last weeks. That ‘star’ is Venus. That planet offers lots of good sightings during the year, yet always in the evening or the early morning, since its orbit is closer to the sun than Earth’s. After weeks of good visibility, Venus is now nearing the sun (from our viewpoint) and will soon have disappeared from the evening skies for some time.

Mercurius is a different story. It stays further away from us, it has no bright reflecting atmosphere, it is much smaller than Venus,…. And it orbits much closer to the sun than Venus.

Visibilities of Mercurius are very rare, and always in difficult conditions. Its appearances are limited to either twilight or dawn, practically never in a dark sky. Even with reference points on a star map, its location is very difficult to find, since usually, the sky will be still too bright to have the reference points visible themselves. So my attempts to find it, when there was an opportunity the last years, all failed.

But this week, there is a reference point you cannot miss : the bright Venus. From our viewpoint, Mercurius passes in a close conjunction with its neigbouring planet. There were some broken clouds over the western horizon, and some contrails that had not dispersed, but around 10:30, with Venus standing in an open spot in the clouds, and then, with my binoculars, I saw it : a small ‘golden’ star like object, no more than two degrees below Venus! Ten minutes later, it was dark enough to see Mercurius with the naked eye. A faint star, but there, it stood.

The forthcoming days, Mercurius will move ‘upward’, with regard to the horizon, and pass closely along Venus. Get your binoculars too, and try to find it. You cannot miss, there is no other bright star in the neighbourhood to confuse with, and the goldish gleam is quite unique, no real star has it.

It is said, Copernicus never has seen Mercurius during his life. Imagine how Ancient astronomers, who had no such things as binoculars to their disposal, were nevertheless able to discern that small planet, with such a bad and rare visibility, in the evening or morning skies.

You find star maps, to help you, on this site :

Click to expand...
Ancient astronomers of course didn't have to deal with light pollution. And they were motivated. (As I recall, the priests at the temple in Jerusalem had to watch for the exact moment of sunset to start feasts like passover.)
Mercury's orbit isn't what one would expect based on Newtonian mechanics. That led to the theory that there was a planet called Vulcan even closer to the sun yet to be discovered, and there were hundreds of searchers and tens of "discoveries". After all, Uranus' eccentricities had led people to Neptune. But a guy named Einstein spoiled the fun in 1915 by predicting the anomaly with his general relativity theory--"close to the sun" means "higher curvature in space" and therefore "precession" in the orbit of Mercury.
Mercury rotates so it always shows the same face to the sun, which means that in craters near the poles in constant shadow water ice apparently exists (at least that's the conclusion from the probes that have gone there). Atmospheres matter when it comes to dispersing heat, and Mercury doesn't really have one (blown away long ago by the solar wind, I guess).
Supposedly, one of the joys of an Amtrak trip across the United States (there are also numerous sorrows with Amtrak, since it uses freight railroad tracks and loses its priority if it runs even a little late, leading to running a whole lot late) is sitting in an observation car at night and watching the stars out on the Plains. Where I live, there is way too much light pollution (and often a lot of clouds). I miss seeing the Milky Way which I used to see quite often years ago. Light pollution has skyrocketed here.
 
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