Night Sky Photography -- 10-02/03-2020 -- The Moon & Mars Rising -- Venus & Regulus Conjunction In Morning Sky

 Good evening fellow stargazers!

Well folks, last evening and earlier this morning, I was able to capture some really outstanding shots of two conjunctions in the night sky taken over the course of a ten hour period, beginning after sundown on Friday the 2nd and ending just before sunrise on Saturday the 3rd of October. 

 

The still bright Full Moon (actually now it is a Waning Gibbous Moon at about 98 percent brightness) meets in the evening sky with the now bright planet Mars. I captured this shot of our bright Luna and the Red Planet rising over the treetops after sunset.

Next two shots I took later in the evening as Luna passed near Mars by less than a degree, or so, in the late night sky overhead. The first shot show the Moon and Mars as they appeared to the naked eye. The second shot is a close-up of Mars over the nearly full moon. Unfortunately, here in North America, we did not get to see the moon occult Mars, so this was about as close as the two heavenly bodies "met" in the sky here in South Carolina.

This final shot of the moon and Mars in the western sky was taken nearly seven hours later. As y'all can see, Mars is now below Luna and will continue to move farther away over the next several days as Mars eventually moves to its closest approach to Earth on the evening of Monday, October 5th.

The moon and Mars were not the only heavenly bodies close to Earth that were "meeting" in the sky dome.

Looking to the eastern sky again about an hour before the breaking dawn, I caught these two outstanding shots of bright Venus in the sky with the bright star, Regulus, appearing just above our bright neighboring planet by roughly half a degree. Regulus is the brightest star in the Constellation Leo The Lion.

 

 

The first shot is how I viewed them through the trees in my back yard -- Regulus is barely visible just above Venus. The second is a close up, showing the planet and the star together.

These two heavenly bodies won’t appear this close together again for another 8 years. 

 

Well my friends, I hope y'all enjoyed these photos as much as I continue to enjoy bringing them to y'all. Have a wonderful Dixie day, and be sure to keep your eyes to the night skies, y'all hear!