Night Sky Photography -- 10-12-2022 -- Uranus Near Occultation Of Luna

Good morning, fellow stargazers!

Well folks, last night I was concerned about the mostly cloudy skies that we'd had down here in my corner of South Carolina all day, and being unable to capture a decent photo of the near occultation of the distant planet Uranus with our lovely Luna in the late night sky.

An occultation occurs when a Solar System body passes in front of a more distant night sky object (such as a star or another solar system body), partially or totally hiding the more distant object and momentarily blocking its light. Occultations can be seen only at the right time and from a limited part of the Earth.

Unfortunately, Uranus would not actually pass behind the Moon from my little corner of Dixie, or the eastern part of the United States. However, the occultation was easily visible in most parts of the western U.S. and most of western and central Canada in the Northern Hemisphere. Here it passed just below Luna closely just beneath the glow of the Moon.

I captured the distant planet Uranus just beneath the bottom of the Moon with my trusty Sony DSC-H200 digital camera at maximum zoom on a 35X Optical Zoom lens using the Manual Exposure setting to capture Uranus and the surface features of the now Waning Gibbous Moon. You can see the small, barely visible dot labeled in the photo, as well as the outstanding features of the lunar surface.

The result was an absolutely beautiful shot of the distant giant planet just below the lovely face of the Man On The Moon.

Don't let the apparent small size of Uranus as seen from here on the surface of the Earth fool y'all. With a average radius of 15,760 miles (or 25,362 kilometers), Uranus is about 4 times wider than our Earth and the third largest planet in our Solar System after Jupiter and Saturn.

In addition, being the seventh planet in the Solar System, Uranus has an average distance of 1.8 billion miles (or 2.9 billion kilometers), Uranus is about 19 astronomical units (AUs) away from the Sun compared to our planet's own 93 million miles. 

At present the moon is approximately 238,855 miles from the Earth and Uranus is about 1.74 billion miles from the Earth.

Graphic showing the size comparison between the Earth, our Moon
and the planet Uranus.

Its possible to spot Uranus with the naked eye on Earth, though it would appear as a very dim dot that would be very easily missed unless you knew exactly where to look for it. The best bet for an amateur astronomer is the use of a telescope, a pair of binoculars, or a really good camera lens.

Well once again I hope y'all enjoyed my photo, this one was a pure joy to capture and I am thankful for the break in the mostly cloudy sky to get the shot perfectly.

Have a wonderful evening and be sure to keep your eyes to the night skies, y'all hear!