Starship Asterisk*

bystander wrote:I wonder what Kepler would say.

• "Somee watched to see if there would be a comet as
  had been expressly predicted by the astrology of the Arabs,"
  (Although Smita missed this last event because of clouds,
  others in Boston noted nothing amiss.)

neufer wrote:Strange for Mercury to be the highest in the sky

apodman wrote:

neufer wrote:Strange for Mercury to be the highest in the sky

Yeah, in the few glimpses I've managed of Mercury in my life, there has never been anything lower. And a nice unobstructed horizon like in this APOD is usually a good idea if anyone wants to catch a view of Mercury. Judging from the more-or-less vertical alignment of the planets in this APOD, the ecliptic must intersect the horizon at a nice high angle at this time of day at this time of year - usually I'm not so lucky, and the ecliptic intersects the horizon at a low angle at dawn or dusk during Mercury's greatest elongation from the sun, resulting in Mercury much lower in the sky.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_(planet) wrote:
<<Mercury is more often easily visible from Earth’s Southern Hemisphere than from its Northern Hemisphere; this is because its maximum possible elongations west of the Sun always occur when it is early autumn in the Southern Hemisphere, while its maximum possible eastern elongations happen during late winter in the Southern Hemisphere. In both of these cases, the angle Mercury strikes with the ecliptic is maximized, allowing it to rise several hours before the Sun in the former instance and not set until several hours after sundown in the latter in countries located at southern temperate zone latitudes, such as Argentina and New Zealand. By contrast, at northern temperate latitudes, Mercury is never above the horizon of a more-or-less fully dark night sky. (The Hubble Space Telescope cannot observe Mercury at all, due to safety procedures which prevent its pointing too close to the Sun.)

Mercury is brightest as seen from Earth (magnitude up to −1.9) when it is at a gibbous phase, between either quarter phase and full. Although the planet is further away from Earth when it is gibbous than when it is a crescent, the greater illuminated area visible more than compensates for the greater distance. The opposite is true for Venus, which appears brightest when it is a thin crescent, because it is much closer to Earth than when gibbous.>>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canterbury_Tales wrote:
<<On an April day, a group of 29 pilgrims meet in Tabard Inn, just outside London, and set out on a pilgrimage from London to Canterbury to pay their respects to the tomb of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. When the group stops for the night, the host of the pilgrimage proposes that they all tell stories to each other along the way. The pilgrims agree to tell FOUR stories each, two on the way to Canterbury, and two on the way back. The person who tells the best story, as determined by the host, will have his supper paid for by the rest of the group. No winner is chosen by the host in the end, and only a few of the pilgrims have told their tales by the time the story ends because Chaucer died before he could finish it. Chaucer ends the work with a retraction apologizing for anything in the stories which may have been inappropriate.
.........................................................
The Canterbury tale-telling begins with the Knight's Tale:

At Thebes, in his country, as I said,
Upon a night in sleep as he him laid,
Him thought how that the winged god Mercury
Before him stood, and bade him to be merry.
His sleepy yard in hand he bare upright; rod
A hat he wore upon his haires bright.>>