Martin,

Just change the year to 1972 in the calendar. (upper left)

After you click on an event in the calendar, when you click on let's say 'Venus at greatest elongation west' in the middle of the page you find a section 'Apparitions of Venus' evening and morning with dates - Clicking on the date will give you the time.
or
if you click on Ephemeris, you will see in the Ephemeris a section 'Observable'
Make sure you put a checkmark on 'Show observalibility' in the Ephemeris and click Update. A day to day ephemeris will be generated with the % of obversability. The section 'Object' let you select the planets you want.

Thank you. It took a bit of looking around, but I found some nice readable tables. Petr, if you are reading this: do you have any comments on the reliability of these data?

(PS: I just noticed that the site has PDF kits for making your own planisphere or astrolabe! This year's Christmas presents taken care of...)

Ouranos wrote:Thank you Cruiser1, Great information to read these graphs.

Remember that the Astrolog and Alcyone graphs are simply measuring whether bodies are above or below the local horizon, which is relatively easy to understand and calculate. That's why their results are similar, even when considering (or not considering) atmospheric refraction and elevation above sea level.

This calculation is related to but different than the more detailed issue of whether a planet or star is actually visible to the naked eye in the sky, which can be affected by its magnitude and other variables. In other words, in real life stars gradually wink out one by one (dim stars first) as the Sun rises, as opposed to everything suddenly disappearing the moment the Sun touches the plane of the horizon. "Atmospheric extinction" is again a more abstract astronomical problem, and is also affected by conditions such as amount of local haze, the quality of your vision or what binoculars or telescope you're using, etc.

Note that Astrolog can also calculate the magnitude of stars and planets, in which planet magnitudes vary over time (e.g. due to varying angular diameter due to their distance, and the phase of planets such as how much of Venus is a crescent). Astrolog calls Swiss Ephemeris to do these calculations: https://www.astro.com/swisseph/swephprg ... c112948997

Ouranos wrote:What I like about this calendar is some astronomical facts mentioned like the lunar occultation of Uranus by the Moon on Oct 12, visible for most of North America. It is like an eclipse of Uranus.

Yes, eclipses and transits/occultations are a cool phenomenon! Astrologers sometimes overlook eclipses in favor of generic "Moon Conjunct Uranus" aspects, not realizing that the Moon actually occulting Uranus should be a much stronger Moon Uranus Conjunction (just as a Solar Eclipse is a much stronger New Moon or Sun Conjunct Moon aspect). Astrolog can display times of eclipses too, including in graphical form such as the below "telescope view" which shows the Moon occulting Venus (in which the differing phases of both the Moon and Venus are displayed)

Thank you Cruiser1,

The heliacal rising was seen by the Ancients as gaining in freshness, light, quality and power.
And it all comes down to 'light'. How bright is it in the sky? Like Mars in Gemini right now. The closenest to the Fixed Star Aldebaran (acting as a spotlight) tells us that Gemini is not just another transit of Mars in the sky. It is more important, it is all in our face, visible and bright.

In the Calendar of Astronomical Events, they list the levels of difficulty
By default, it is set to include unobservable events but listed in the drop-down box you have
- visible to the naked eye
- visible through binoculars
- visible through a small telescope
- visible through a four-inch telescope
- visible through a large telescope
- of any difficulty level
All of which have a % of visibility to which they will sometimes indicate that the planet is above the horizon but may be difficult to see.

The conceptor, Dominic Ford works for the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, UK. And between 2017-2019, he led the development of the data-analysis pipeline for 4MOST's spectroscopic surveys of the Milky Way, working in Sofia Feltzing's group at Lund Observatory, Sweden. (This should interest Martin here!)

Keep up the great work!
Ouranos

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(PS: I just noticed that the site has PDF kits for making your own planisphere or astrolabe! Very Happy This year's Christmas presents taken care of...)

Let yourself loose Martin with the original 100% gold.