I'm Back Home

I'm writing from home tonight, back here for the next two weeks though I wish I weren't. My neighbors never turn their stereo off and they have their friends over until 2-3am, pretty much every night. Thank goodness I'm only here half the time (I think there's an optimist/pessimist comparison in there somewhere; "do you see your apartment as half empty or half full"? ).

I spent part of the evening listening to the new Rick Wakeman album, "The Red Planet", which is really good. It's all instrumental and keyboard heavy, in the style of his early progressive records. I also read a few more pages of Neil Peart's "Far & Wide", about his motorcycle travels during Rush's last tour in 2015. It's much more than just a travel book, though. Neil gets his thoughts in on a thousand other subjects. He has the same habit I do of putting tangential thoughts in parentheses, and he does it on every page (which made me feel better about doing it myself).

I went for a CSUN walk around 10pm, and in the sky you could see the Moon, almost full, and on either side of the Moon - fairly close - you could see two bright planets, one of which I assumed was Venus, the brightest object in the sky after the Moon. The other one I thought was Jupiter, because it was less bright and was situated in the area where Jupiter is often seen, in the Southern sky. I am pretty new to skywatching, and I only do it when I'm on my walks, but on some nights you can't help noticing the way the Moon and planets are lined up (and in Los Angeles that's all we get. No Milky Way, nor very many stars). But I've learned where the observable planets usually appear, at least the ones I can see, and so I usually recognise Venus and Jupiter, which you can see most every night, and Mars, which has that orange tint (not quite red in the Northridge sky).

You can't mistake Mars because of it's color, and it doesn't appear all that often. So tonight, I thought I was looking at Venus and Jupiter on either side of the Moon, even though Venus had been appearing in the Western sky recently.

But when I Googled it a little while ago, I found out that the two planets were Jupiter and Saturn.

Wow. For me, that was awesome, because I don't think I've ever seen Saturn before. If I have, I didn't know what I was looking at. But it was really bright, it stood out just like Jupiter, and this time Jupiter was like Venus, extra bright tonight.

You can see both planets near the Moon tomorrow night, according to the website earthsky.com, so look for the Moon on the left, then Saturn, then Jupiter. ////

Elizabeth, if you are reading I hope you had a good day.

I love you.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)