The other night I went out and photographed the Moon near Antares. As usual with photos taken of the sky when the Moon is much more than five days old, the moon is over-exposed in order to get Antares to show at all.
It turned out that while the Moon was near its North Ascending Node, it was still below the ecliptic and low enough in the sky that I had to go into the street to capture it with my camera.
Since Antares is one of the so-called Royal Stars, I decided that I could us the position of the Moon on Portable Stonehenge to mark Antares' position on the Wheel of the Year. Thousands of years ago, Antares would have been near the sun during the northern hemisphere's autumnal equinox but the procession of the seasons has shifted things around and now it's closer (relatively speaking) to the sun during the winter solstice.
And yes, the song "Beyond Antares" is playing in my head now.
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