Good morning fellow stargazers!
Very early this morning -- or late last night depending on your perspective -- at about 3:30 AM EST, we were blessed with mercifully clear skies between the summer thunderstorms we've been getting here in South Carolina all July.
Granted these off-and-on rain showers are good for the plants, and certainly are a welcome relief from the hot summer we've been having this year (at least until the sun comes out after and it turns very muggy!), but they do make stargazing and planet watching a major pain.
Thankfully, the early morning sky was very clear and I was about to capture some really great shots of two of our planetary neighbors: Mars and Jupiter with our lovely Luna in her Last Quarter phase.
In one of the photos I was about to capture both planets and our moon along with the four brightest Galilean Moons just barely visible with Jupiter. Both the moon and Mars are visible between the gap in the trees.
As you can see in the close-up of Jupiter, the four Galilean Moon: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, appear as small bright dots, or smudges.
Jupiter actually has a whopping 80 known moons
and satellites in its orbit, though the four Galilean moons are by far
the largest and most visible with a good camera lens, telescope, or pair
of binoculars.
Io, the third largest of the four moons discovered by Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei in 1610, is the closest moon to Jupiter, while Europa -- which is just barely visible and almost blocked from view in transition to Jupiter -- is both the smallest of these four moons and the sixth-closest to the gas giant planet.
Ganymede, the seventh-closest moon to Jupiter, is the largest and most massive of our Solar System's moons -- the ninth-largest object in the Solar System including our Sun. Callisto, the farthest of the four large moons, is the second-largest moon of Jupiter and the third-largest moon in the Solar System.
My final two shots show our own lovely moon at the end of her Last Quarter phase -- the Last Quarter Moon for July 2022 was actually at its peak in the afternoon of the previous day, and Luna is actually beginning to wane as it moves closer to the meet the sunrise in the eastern sky.
You can see the moon and Mars through the branches of the trees. The Red Planet lives up to its nickname as the rust-covered planet appears to be a bright orange-red in the early morning sky. Beautiful sight to behold if you know where to look.
Well I hope that y'all enjoyed my planetary photographs and presentation. Let me know what you think in the comments below and, as always, have a lovely Dixie Day from South Carolina and be sure to keep your eyes to the night skies, y'all hear!
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