Astronomical Spectacular

1
Don't know if any of you folks pays attention to "Science in the News" but for the next week or so, until 7 Feb, all five naked-eye visible planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) AND the [waning] moon can be seen at the same time in the early morning sky.
I don't know how often something like this happens, but I wasn't about to miss it.
Went out about 06:50 AZ time (MST) this morning (31 Jan) and easily spotted all but Mercury...Venus nearly blinds you.
Finally spotted Mercury below Venus, but it is very dim and already hard to see because of the approaching daylight.

JRRT was familiar with the night sky ---in LOTR he mentions constellations and at least one star, and correctly situates them in the sky for the time of year in the story:
Menelvagor with his 3 star belt (Orion --a winter constellation)
The Sickle as it rises over Bree hill (Big Dipper/Ursa Major)
Remmirath aka "the Netted Stars" (the Pleiades aka the Seven Sisters in the constellation Taurus, the Bull)
{red] Borgil (the red giant Aldebaran also in the constellation Taurus)

While reading LOTR I picked up on the ones listed above because I'm very familiar with the constellations of the Northern Hemisphere and thought it was pretty neat that Tolkien knew them as well.
Here is a link to a website that discusses the Night Sky of Middle earth as determined from all of Tolkien's works

http://www.forodrim.org/daeron/md_astro.html

"Eternity is an awful long time, especially towards the end."

"What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing.
It also depends on what sort of person you are.” -- CSL

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