| | | Is there a whiskey still at this remote site? That might explain it... -g-
Do you mean e.g. why is Pagasus so high in the sky now when it was low on the horizon last time you observed it?
I'd guess it's a) you saw it in winter from your backyard, but when you go to a remote site, it's summer and likely later in the evening, too (due to late sunset), and so a) the earth has moved 6 months around the sun, thus shifting everything you see except less so as you look closer to Polaris, and b) it's later in the day thus rotating it around the Polaris more. As the earth rotates, stars to the 'right' of Polaris rotate UP and starts to the 'left' of Polaris rotate DOWN (i.e. counter-clockwise).
Looking east or west, you see differences based on time of year (for same time of night). e.g. if it's my birthday, and therefore Scorpio, then that's actually where the SUN is (literally IN the constellation of Scorpio, if you could see it during the day), so the opposite of Scorpio is what you see at midnight (Taurus) looking up to the plane where the planets and moon travel.
And due to the axis tilt of the earth, even looking esp. south you will notice another oddity that I never really thought about until a couple years ago. When the sun is LOW on the horizon at noon due to it being winter, the moon and the planets (in the same ecliptic) are HIGH at midnight. They are following the arc that the sun will take in the summer, and vice versa. In summer, the sun is high, but the moon and planets are low (if at their high point at midnight). |
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