By Len Wallick
Out of necessity, this blog is written before the day you will see it. On this day, December 2, 2010, perhaps even as you are reading this, NASA will be holding a news conference “…to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.”
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This blog will not — repeat, not — attempt to predict the nature of the finding that will be discussed. It is worth noting that today has two sets of aspects that involve more than two objects. Those two aspect sets will be the subject of this blog. Whatever connection there is with the results of the news conference will be left to you who peruse and/or affix comments to these words.
But first, let’s look ahead to the weekend.
Coming up this Sunday, the Sagittarius New Moon will find Sol and Luna locked in conjunction with the Great Attractor, the two centaurs Pholus and Hylonome, Ixion — an object that ventures out past Neptune — and Narcissus, an asteroid. Try to look away from that one. Eight hours or so later, Uranus will station direct in Pisces and join the rest of the major planets in unanimous forward motion for a handful of days. How often does that happen?
But wait. There’s more! The day before the New Moon, Mars (also in Sagittarius) conjoins the Galactic Center. Almost exactly 48 hours after the martian hook-up precisely as Uranus is stationing direct, Mercury will conjoin Pluto in Capricorn. Be a pal, somebody. Please pass the smelling salts and let me hold onto them until Monday.
But that will be then, this is now. No point in going all Uranus and getting ahead of ourselves. There is, after all, no time like the present. There is more to do than buying tickets for the weekend. Today, after all, is all we have and today has a lot. Most notably, the waning crescent Moon moves into Scorpio to conjoin Venus while Mercury sextiles them both. Actually, Venus and Mercury have been in a functional sextile for most of this week, holding a mutually supportive yoga. Also, we have a really interesting opposition between a centaur and an asteroid that literally promises to capture the moment as the axis of a yod. Interested now? Thought so.