Posted by Andy on October 21, 2010 at 07:14:01 user AndyG.
August 12th 1924
The evening was perfectly calm, everywhere fish were rising to flies, and great crowds of swallows pursued them over the smooth water, all rushing together up the narrow cut, in little crowds, like bands of very fast skaters over clear ice. As it grew dark I smoked in the cockpit, watching a red star and a white, Mars and Venus, perhaps, on opposite sides of the Moon.
Stellarium (a free astronomy software download and very good) tells me that the Moon was near-full that night, rising just before sunset at 7pm local time.
Mars (bright at magnitude -2.7) rose at around 8.20pm. By 9pm, both Mars, to the southeast, and Jupiter, to the southwest (magnitude -2.2, and almost as bright as it is at the moment) were the same height above the horizon, and very nearly 45 degrees away from each side of the Moon. With clear skies and far from the lights of any towns, it would have been a quite obvious and lovely sight.
But surely that's a lot of pipe-smoking?! :o)
Andy