Around midnight last night I was informed of an astronomical conjunction, that of Jupiter and the Moon. To my surprise, with a decent set of binoculars, I was able to make out fur of Saturn’s moons.

Properly motivated, I spent a chunk of today finding and fetching an honest-to-goodness telescope, though not a proper reflector. Finding it frustrating to set up and control this afternoon, I have been awaiting the coming of darkness impatiently, apparently in the belief that things aggravating to perform in the light of day while sober will become easy and fun while lightly liquored in the dark. I mean, why not? So much else in life hews closely to this rule, why not astronomy?

Aggravatingly, clouds have been piling in as the dark comes upon us. There may yet be clear sky to the Moon’s direction, south and eastish.

I found it interesting to identify Mars without question as the dusk deepened, two hours up the sky from where it had been at midnight last night. Prompting the title of this entry, it struck me that the distance in the sky between Mars’ position at this moment – 10pm – and that when I saw it last night at midnight is exactly equivalent to the proportional distance of two hours on a clock face the size of the universe with my observing eye at the center. The magic – well, not magic – of base twelve.