Highlights of the Week: Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, Mars, OOB Moon

April 09, 2023 | by Daniel Giamario |

This week is particularly great for night sky watchers as Mars, Venus and Mercury are dominating the evening sky.

Don’t miss it!

Venus with The Pleiades

On Monday April 10, at 9:47pm PDT, Venus enters the sign of Gemini.  Blazing brightly, now a good 39 degrees from the Sun in the evening sky, she is just to the left of the Pleiades. This also marks the entry of Venus into the Lokotan named “Sacred Hoop”, the circle of stars surrounding the galactic edge: one of the two places in the sky where the ecliptic and the galactic plane intersect. Modern astronomers refer to this area of the sky as the winter hexagon. However, they use Aldebaran as one of the stars marking their hexagon, rather than the Pleiades. If any planet is within the zone of 0Gemini to 23Cancer, it’s in the hoop, and within the area where nearly every story of creation is found. The area is also known as the “Silver Gate”.  Mars, now at 9Cancer, is also currently in the hoop.

Mercury

On Tuesday, Mercury reaches greatest evening elongation in the current 120-day Capricorn synodic overstory.  At 10Taurus50, and almost 20 degrees from the Sun, this is Mercury’s finest visibility of the year for the Northern Hemisphere, less good for the Southern Hemisphere. In the Northern Hemisphere, Mercury can be pretty easily spotted about 20 degrees below Venus.

Jupiter

Quite the opposite is the case for Jupiter. Also on Tuesday, Jupiter exactly conjoins the Sun at 3:07pm PDT at 21Aries45, thus remains invisible. This is a yearly event as Jupiter spends a good month on the other side of the Sun, off the world stage. Our school refers to this as the exterior underworld, where Jupiter can receive galactic transmissions, unseen on Earth. This week is when these energies are strongest. Chiron and Vesta are sharing the space with Jupiter in Aries on the other side of the Sun.

Mars

Meanwhile, Mars – now in Cancer – continues its long OOB time-frame beyond 25 degrees North declination.

Extreme Out-of-Bounds Moon

Monday through Wednesday is yet another extreme out-of-bounds Moon. This is most extreme on Tuesday afternoon/evening with the Capricorn Moon reaching as far as 27S56 declination, more than four degrees off the ecliptic, and the farthest extreme south of the year so far.  In 2024-2025, during the vaunted Lunar Standstill season, the Moon can go well beyond 28degrees North and South declination. There is generally a three-day zone of these OOB Lunar extremes.

My favorite keywords for the OOB phenomena are: eccentricity, individuality, outsider, outlander, and especially a refusal to be assimilated into the norm! I have found this to be at least on par with what is often ascribed to retrogrades, but even more so. In essence, it’s being committed to seeing and behaving beyond the boundaries of “normal”; in this case, Sagittarius and Capricorn Moons. 

For me, the major highlight of the week is the start of our in-person all-school convergence on Tuesday in Oracle/Arizona. We will live stream some of the presentations on our YouTube channel.

I hope to see you!

                                                                                           

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