Planetary Photography -- 09-09-2023 -- Jupiter & Uranus With Orion & Taurus Star Clusters

Salutations fellow stargazers!

Now that September is here, with the fall equinox only a few weeks away, the winter constellations are rising very early in the morning -- or really late at night depending on your perspective.

This time I was up very early, but the night time skies overhead here in my part of South Carolina were mostly clear, though storms were expected before sunrise.

Nevertheless, I was able to capture three really good photographs of two of the most well known of the constellations: Orion The Hunter and Taurus The Bull with the planets Jupiter and Uranus close by.

The first two photos are the wide shots showing the major stars of these constellations with bright Jupiter just above them. Uranus is too far away in these shots to see, so I labeled the distant outer planet's location with a star in its position between Jupiter and the Pleiades Star Cluster.

My third, and final photo, is the close-up Jupiter and Uranus (still just barely visible) with the Pleiades and the Hyades Star Cluster located in the Constellation Taurus The Bull.

At its present distance Uranus, the seventh planet in our Solar System, is approximately 1.78 billion miles (or 2.864 billion kilometers -- or 159.25 light-minutes) from our Earth. Jupiter is much closer at 401.33 million miles (or 645.87 million kilometers -- or 35.56 light-minutes) from us here on Earth.