My last post was long, and rather heavy. I’m not sure what readers thought of it, since almost no one responded and no one commented. Which is OK, really. I don’t write for likes or dollars. I write to share what I feel called to share, what is taking shape inside of me. The next regular post, on fear and letting go of fear, is beginning to take form.
For the past few months I have felt a special connection to the Moon - and to some extent to the other planets as well. I don’t know what this means on a deeper level, but practically it has meant that I always know where the Moon is at in her cycle and that I spend at least a few moments each day gazing moonward. I have a sense that the orbits of the great spheres spiraling through space together are an important part of the weaving of the pattern, that their embodied energies and magnetic fields and gravity waves and subtle perturbations of space-time create a rhythm or a music within which we dance, over the course of our lives on Earth. I don’t especially resonate with the charts and codified rules of conventional astrology, and yet I have a sense that - like most sacred texts - these are based upon a deep ancient knowledge that we have denied and forgotten and to which we are perhaps now reawakening.
I have long gazed skyward - I still love the telescope that I received as a Christmas present at age 12 or so - and I have long wished to have an intuitive understanding of the way the moon and planets move in the sky, rather than relying on calendars and charts. The various tutorials and astronomy texts describe all of the motions, but not really in a cohesive way. A couple of weeks ago it finally clicked into place for me, and I will attempt to share that here, assuming that others might also find it enlightening.
A 3-D model of the solar system is very useful in these explorations - one that you can rotate and move through time and examine from different angles. The Mobile Observatory app is the one I used to create the diagrams below. Solar System Scope is an excellent visualization as well, albeit with annoying music.
Here we are, as of this morning. The Moon is one day past full - after an amazing amber-gold moonrise that I was lucky enough to watch from a high hilltop with friends last night. Mercury is between us and the Sun. Venus and Jupiter are behind the Sun. My goal is to move from this model to something that makes sense, looking up at the sky.
We’re looking down at Earth’s north pole. She is spinning counterclockwise. We will see a lot of counterclockwise motions.
Imagine yourself laying down, on your back, with your head pointed north. The red dot is the top of your head, this is a top view. (Ignore the fact that you’re bigger than the moon to be visible.) It’s noon, and the Sun is directly overhead. You’re looking straight up at him. All of the planets and the Sun and the Moon are approximately in the same plane, and although you are laying down on Earth you are standing on this plane, or you can imagine it cutting you in half at the waist.
Six hours have passed now, and the Sun is setting. The Earth has rotated a quarter turn counterclockwise. Your right arm points west to the setting Sun. Your left arm points east to the rising full Moon.
Another six hours have passed, and the Sun is now behind you, shining on the other side of the planet. The full Moon is high overhead.
Another six hours have passed, and the Earth has rotated another quarter turn. Your right hand points west to the setting Moon and your left hand points east to the rising Sun.
The Sun and Moon and stars appear to move from east to west across the sky, but really they aren’t moving much and instead we are moving from west to east, at nearly 1,000 miles per hour on the surface of a spinning planet. Or, as Gordon Bok sings, more eloquently, the world is always turning toward the morning.
With this visualization in hand, we can divide our model into an evening and a morning half. Planets in the evening half will be visible after sunset into the evening hours. Planets in the morning half will be visible in the hours before sunrise. Planets - or the full Moon - directly opposite the Sun will rise at sunset and will be high overhead at midnight. Planets between the angled lines are too close to the Sun to be visible - they rise in the glow before sunrise or set in the glow after sunset.
Here I have tilted the model so that more distant planets are visible. Mars and Saturn rise in the east in the hours before dawn. Venus is too close to the Sun to be readily visible. Jupiter appears in the western twilight after sunset and sets soon after. Uranus and Neptune are too dim to see without binoculars or a telescope.
Here I have rotated the model 180 degrees so that we’re looking from the Sun toward Earth rather than from the Earth toward the Sun. The orbits beyond Earth are all empty. At this particular point in time all of the planets are in one slice of the sky, close to the Sun, and only the full Moon shines overhead at midnight.
If you’re so inspired, play with these visualizations until they make sense, until you can look at the model and see that Saturn will rise a few hours before dawn, that Jupiter will be in the west after sunset. We’re about to add more motions.
The Moon orbits counterclockwise around the Earth, completing an orbit in just over 27 days. However, the Earth also moves 1/13 of the way around her orbit in that time, so the Moon has to go a little farther to end up in the same location in the sky every 29.5 days or so. Using the visualization from above, see if you can convince yourself:
That the Moon rises later every day (by an average of 50 minutes) and moves leftward in the sky if viewed at the same time.
That the first quarter Moon will be high in the southern sky at sunset and set around midnight.
That the full Moon (opposite the Earth from the Sun) will rise at sunset, be high in the sky at midnight, and set at sunrise.
That the last quarter moon will rise around midnight and be high in the southern sky at dawn.
The Moon is visible in the evening for the first half of her cycle and in the early morning for the second half. We see only a crescent illuminated when she is between us and the Sun, and we see her full face illumated when we are between the sun and her - unless the alignment is perfect in which case the Earth’s shadow blocks the light and we have a lunar eclipse.
Now we’ll add the final, and most challenging, part of this visualization exercise.
The Earth, and all of the planets, are orbiting around the Sun, once again counterclockwise. However, from our perspective the Sun is always overhead at noon and beneath our feet at midnight. Which is to say that our reference frame is rotating. This is challenging to visualize looking at a model of planets, so let’s try another example of counterclockwise rotation: baseball.
You’re running to first base. If you look at the shortstop, the pitcher is moving to the left in your field of vision. But if you keep your eyes on the pitcher, the stationary shortstop is moving to the right in the background. Try it out it real life.
The divide between morning and evening skies rotates as the Earth moves. Relative to the Sun, the stars move. Really it’s us that is moving around the Sun, but it makes more sense you use the Sun as our reference. Like the shortstop in the background, the stars appear to move to the right as our reference line rotates counterclockwise. The same star rises four minutes earlier and sets four minutes earlier each day. Orion rises after midnight in the autumn, is high overhead in winter, and is setting in the west after sunset in spring. In summer, Orion is behind the Sun and so we can’t see him.
Now let’s consider the planets. The outer planets are easier. Imagine the right fielder starts walking to the left in front of the bleachers while you’re running around the bases. Relative to the fans - or the stars - he’s moving to the left, but if you keep your eyes on the pitcher he’s still moving to the right in your field of vision. If you’re running loops around the pitcher you’ll have to run a little more than a complete loop until the walking outfielder is directly behind the pitcher again.
The same star will return to the same place in the sky - at the same time of day - in exactly one year. The outer planets also move rightward in the sky, but at slightly slower rates, taking longer than a year to make a complete cycle. They rise before dawn, then a few months later they rise in the evening to shine all night, then a few months later they rise in daylight to emerge shining in the western sky after sunset, then they disappear behind the sun for a couple of months to emerge rising before dawn once more. (When we pass the outer planets in their orbits, they appear for a time to move to the right relative to the stars. This is retrograde motion which is not obvious watching the sky but is often referenced in astrology.)
Neptune makes a complete cycle of the sky in one year and 2.5 days. Uranus does it in a year and 5 days. Saturn does it in a year and 13 days. This means that if Saturn is directly overhead at midnight, next year he will be at that same spot two weeks later. It takes 14 years for Saturn to transition from being a summertime night planet to being a wintertime night planet, and another 14 years to return to summer.
Jupiter - our walking outfielder - makes a complete cycle in a year and a month. It takes just shy of six years for Jupiter to transition from being a summer planet to being a winter planet.
Mars is not an outfielder. Mars is running in a circle just outside the bases, and just a little bit slower than you. Keeping your eyes on the pitcher, you find that you have to run around the bases a little more than twice before Mars is once again in your sights. Mars and Saturn currently rise at a similar time in the pre-dawn hours, but Mars is running away from us and so will not be overhead at midnight until next January while Saturn will be in the same spot this September. After next January, it will be another 2.1 years until Mars is again high in the south at midnight.
The inner planets are a different story. They are running circles around the pitcher inside the bases, so they regularly pass us. They also never appear too far from the pitcher - or the Sun - in our field of vision.
Venus is currently rising just before dawn, but unlike Saturn she is headed for the evening sky, because she is orbiting faster than us. Venus will pass behind the sun in early June before emerging into the evening twilight sky later this summer. She will gradually rise higher into the evening sky until next January, then dive rapidly toward the horizon, passing between us and the Sun in March 2025 and then rapidly rising earlier and higher in the morning sky to reach a high point in June of next year. After that she will gradually rise later and sink into the morning twilight until she passes behind the Sun again in January 2026. A complete cycle of Venus - the time to return to the same location in the sky - takes 1.6 years.
Mercury is even quicker, returning to approximately the same location in the sky every four months. Picture a zippy dog running fast circles around the pitcher, still in the same direction. Mercury follows the same overall pattern as Venus, just faster and remaining lower in the sky such that he is only visible from earth for two brief stretches of his orbit, when he is angularly farthest from the Sun. Mercury is currently rising into the pre-dawn sky toward peak visibility in early May.
There is one final piece to the puzzle. I have so far ignored the tilt of Earth’s axis, which causes the Sun to be high in the sky in the summer and low in the sky in the Winter and thereby creates the seasons. The plane of the solar system completes its full “wobble” in the sky every day as Earth rotates. This means that when the Sun is high in summer, planets - and the full Moon - opposite the Sun will be low in the midnight summer sky. And when the Sun is low in winter, the midnight planets and Moon will be high in the winter sky. My father and I used to step outside on December full Moon nights to measure the length of our shadows to see when the Moon was highest. In March, the first quarter Moon will be high in the evening sky while the last quarter Moon will be low in the pre-dawn sky. In September, the first quarter Moon will be low in the evening sky while the last quarter Moon will be high in the pre-dawn sky.
I hope that was somewhat helpful and not too confusing :-).
The Most Underappreciated Band in America
Last Friday I discovered my new favorite band playing to a crowd of about 30 people at our local grange hall. The Rough and Tumble is playing a tour of tiny venues across the US, and you should definitely see them if they are near you. In my opinion they deserve to be far more famous - at least on the level of headlining folk festivals and playing sold-out theaters instead of house concerts.
Carry You is a simple and beautiful anthem to acceptance in bittersweet times of parting - seeing a child off into the world, or losing a loved one, or the end of a long relationship.
God of War is a haunting critique of fear-based gun culture, religous support of violence, and our cultural inurement to the everyday reality of today’s wars.
Their other songs are great too!
love your way of more conceptually understanding the workings of the sky. I always find it so interesting and have said that something that felt missing for me in astrology was that very real, rooted experience of watching and understanding the planets moving in the sky. Otherwise it feels too shallow, too arbitrary. I have a night sky app on my phone but even that sometimes doesn't totally feel enough for me to fully grasp the grand complexity for all that is alive and moving up there. This is a helpful introduction to begin to grasp such intricate ideas.
"For the past few months I have felt a special connection to the Moon - and to some extent to the other planets as well. I don’t know what this means on a deeper level, but practically it has meant that I always know where the Moon is at in her cycle and that I spend at least a few moments each day gazing moonward."
This has been me too, and it has certainly become more pronounced in the past maybe 12 months. It feels there is a yearning for the skies, and especially the moon. She came to me in a dream one night, interrupting another dream. I woke and went outside to witness her slowly setting over the horizon. Since then I've known where the moon is in the sky and in her cycle.