12/07/11 – Ephemeris – Where are the planets this week?
Wednesday, December 7th. The sun will rise at 8:05. It’ll be up for 8 hours and 57 minutes, setting at 5:02. The moon, 3 days before full, will set at 6:16 tomorrow morning.
It’s Wednesday and time again to take a look at the whereabouts of the bright planets. The planet Venus is low in the southwestern twilit sky sunset setting at 6:57, and should be visible by 5:45. Jupiter is now the most prominent planet of the evening sky located in the high in the southeast and is seen against the stars of the constellation Aries. It will pass due south at 9:33 p.m. In a telescope it will be accompanied by its 4 brightest moons. It will set at 4:18 a.m.. Mars will rise at 11:55 p.m in the east northeast and will be in the constellation Leo. Mars will be due south at 6:34 a.m. It is 117 million miles away and closing. Saturn will rise at 3:46 a.m. just to the left of the bright star Spica in the east southeast.
* Times, as always are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.
Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog 
Hi Bob,
Great blog.
Do you know where I could obtain the following information?
the exact positions of all the known planets on any given day – with the ability to rewind history and head back to say 1836 (random year!)
I’m a financial trader and I wish to research planetary positions on certain dates (mainly when the markets crash) to see if there’s an astrological link or not.
Thank you for your time and I’m enjoying your blog
The HOVIS Trader
A planetarium program like Stellarium (link’s on the blog) will work. Put in the date you want, find the planet and click on it and the planet’s position pops up. Stellarium displays two positions based on: equinox of date and of 01/01/2000, a standard epoch. It does not display the epoch of whatever astrologers are using. We don’t do astrology.
I don’t know if that helps.
Bob
Thanks for the reply – I don’t want to look at Astrology either, just to see if there’s a coincidence with planetary positions.
I’ll have a look at your suggestion I’m sure it will help as all I need are the positions of the planets on any given date.
I might be researching entirely the wrong thing, but it’s something I need to discount – within the stock markets they’re linked by key Fibonacci ratios, these ratios are also present in planetary distances from each other too! The coincidence & presence of these ratios lead me to think that planteary cycles and orbits could potentially affect the stock market.
I’ll find out in my quest over the years!
Thank you once and again and merry christmas