Greetings & Salutations, fellow stargazers!
This morning I got up about an hour before sunrise and took a small drive to the tallest local point near my home which has a largely open and unobstructed view of the eastern horizon above the treeline, which happened to be in the center of my hometown of Chester, South Carolina.
I set up my tripod and was able to capture a couple of really good photos of the Moon and our own planet's two closest neighbors: Venus and Mars. The first shot I took at the top of the hill overlooking downtown Chester, and the second near the bottom using the power line pole and wires for the foreground. The three heavenly bodies appear in a roughly uneven triangle in the sky.
The
planet Venus is, of course, the third-brightest object in the sky seen
here from the surface of our Earth after the Sun and Luna (our Moon) and
is usually most visible after sunset and before sunrise making it one
of the first evening "stars" in the night sky, as well as the last of
the morning "stars" -- depending on where Venus lies in relation to its
orbit around the Sun compared to Earth.
At present, Venus is visible just two hours before sunrise here in the Northern Hemisphere. Its orbit is taking the planet lower in the sky dome towards the eastern horizon and the rising Sun in the mornings.
In contrast, Mars has been, until recently, on the other side of the Sun in relation to Earth, and thus invisible until about the beginning of this month in the glare of the sunrise. However, The Red Planet is slowly rising away from the Sun in the early morning hours.
As you can see in the photos I took, bright Venus is easily visible with the light of the Sun reflecting off the hot, hellish clouds that cover the planet. Cold and distant Mars, by contrast, is very dim since its farther away in its orbit from our vantage point here on Earth, just barely visible in the light of the coming sunrise less than 45 minutes later.
As Venus sets and Mars rises, our two closest planetary neighbors will appear to move closer and meet in the early morning sky next week with their closest approach (or, conjunction) happening in two weeks on the morning of Wednesday, February 21st of this year.
At present, Venus is visible just two hours before sunrise here in the Northern Hemisphere. Its orbit is taking the planet lower in the sky dome towards the eastern horizon and the rising Sun in the mornings.
In contrast, Mars has been, until recently, on the other side of the Sun in relation to Earth, and thus invisible until about the beginning of this month in the glare of the sunrise. However, The Red Planet is slowly rising away from the Sun in the early morning hours.
As you can see in the photos I took, bright Venus is easily visible with the light of the Sun reflecting off the hot, hellish clouds that cover the planet. Cold and distant Mars, by contrast, is very dim since its farther away in its orbit from our vantage point here on Earth, just barely visible in the light of the coming sunrise less than 45 minutes later.
As Venus sets and Mars rises, our two closest planetary neighbors will appear to move closer and meet in the early morning sky next week with their closest approach (or, conjunction) happening in two weeks on the morning of Wednesday, February 21st of this year.
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