I’ve been watching Jack Horkheimer for decades, back from when his little 5 minute show on PBS was called “Star Hustler”. With the advent of the internet age, he changed the name of his program to “Star Gazer” for obvious reasons. Oh my.
But I digress. One of my favorite things is to get his advice on What’s Interesting in the Night Sky and head out and have a look. It has been a while since I’ve seen ol’ Jack’s show, though. So when viewing the remnants of the Draconid Meteor Shower yesterday, I noticed a group of planets getting ready to line up, and went to the Internet to see what Jack had to say. Looks like I saw Venus, Saturn and Mercury not far from each other, with Saturn and Mercury very close together. But because the planets move around so (”Planet”, derived from the Greek “Planeta”, meaning “Wanderer”) they will be lined up in a very different way in just a couple of days, with the MOON!
Don’t take my word for it, though. Let Jack Horkheimer talk you through it HERE.
Huh. For some reason I thought Jack Horkheimer had died a couple years ago. I’m glad to be wrong!
I haven’t seen Star Hustler (I am not a fan of the new name) in years, either. I really should find out when my local PBS station shows it, since I’ve been getting back into astronomy lately, even though San Francisco doesn’t have much of a night sky to look at (although I can see the moons of Jupiter from my roof through my Galileoscope).
Jack Horkheimer. Had lunch with him in 2003 when I was working on an animated show for planetariums. Very funny man in person and not someone I ever thought I would meet. He has a comic of his Star Gazer character as well that I’m sure is on the web somewhere.
Awesome, Eddie! I bet that was a great lunch. I am a big skywatch nerd, so I always thought it would be fun to do those graphics for Jack…
Curses. Yet another thing to get hooked on… going over there to watch now.