On Wednesday mornings I leave early to walk 20 minutes or so for a 6:30 am yoga class before going on to work. I look forward to the chance to see the sky if the weather is cooperating. This past Wednesday the morning sky was cloud free, the air clear and crisp. As I walked away from the house, I looked up and saw Ursa Major right overhead, upside down. I turned to walk up the street, looking for the planets that I expected to see - Venus, Mars, and Jupiter.
They have been visible for many weeks now. First, close together, and then as time passed, gradually spreading away from each other along the elliptic, the dimmer, reddish Mars bracketed between bright Jupiter and even brighter Venus. The planets were there, as expected. But that morning held an even more special sight. The moon, waning to just a bright crescent, hung in the sky, right in line with the planets, below and to the left.
From near the horizon, and then rising up across the sky in a line, Moon, Venus, Mars and Jupiter. My mind tried to digest the geometry of the relationships - the Moon orbiting the Earth, Venus closer than Earth to the Sun, Mars and Jupiter farther away, but all appearing in a line from my viewpoint. I'm glad to be alive, just to see this sight one Wednesday morning.
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