Subject: Re: Statue inconsistancy
From: mjf@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Michael J Flory)
Date: 1991-06-12, 19:58
Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks

blowfish@triton.unm.edu (rON.) corrected my sloppy astronomy:

>> >>Yes, a statue of _Venus._  Saturn and Jupiter are not alone in the current
>> >>planetary conjuction -- even in the smoggy skies off Manhattan we can see
>> >>that Venus is the brightest of the three... I took the Venus de Milo to be
>> >>Annie, Coop's Venus, and when the statue disappeared, I feared the worst for
>> >>her.  Or was it just that this symbol of love had fled?

> >Probably because the three planets currently in conjunction are Venus,
> >Jupiter and MARS.

I got caught up in all the planetary symbolism of the last episode...
Here, if anyone's interested, is the output of the wonderful COSMOS demo
posted to comp.binaries.ibm.pc for 9 PM June 10th, for the approximate
latitude and longitude of Twin Peaks (well, Spokane -- TP isn't in my atlas):


The following are for   06/10/1991   21:00:00 DST
                        06/11/1991   04:00:00 GMT

Days since Jan 0 1980:   4,180.16667          Updating: 1 Hour

Body       Right Asc       Declination       Altitude (deg)   Azimuth (deg)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sun         05h 15m         +23x 03'            -2.80x           309.47x
Mer         04h 47m         +22x 28'            -6.90x           314.76x
Ven         08h 32m         +21x 13'            26.17x           273.40x
Mars        08h 48m         +19x 18'            27.50x           268.97x
Jup         08h 53m         +18x 17'            27.69x           267.14x
Sat         20h 34m         -19x 09'           -25.04x            91.43x
Ura         18h 59m         -23x 09'           -12.25x           111.03x
Nep         19h 06m         -21x 44'           -12.41x           108.75x
Plu         15h 17m         -02x 00'            34.92x           146.04x
Moon        03h 51m         +24x 09'           -11.32x           327.07x

(Windows has turned the degree-signs into x's.)


Thanks also to barb@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Barb Miller) for the lovely note
on Persephone.  Today I browsed through the Larousse Encyclopedia of
Mythology looking for parallels -- all I came up with was a ritual (Plains
Indian, I think) in which the chief must drink a huge quantity of porridge
from a pit dug in the ground.  Not nearly so poetic.  (Also caught a note
on the function of birds in Native American myths: usually intermediaries
between man and the gods of the heavens.  So much for my theory that the
Owls, hunters by night, are the opposite of the good Hawk, named for a
hunter by day.)

Michael Flory (mjf@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu)