Night Sky Photography -- 02-15/16-2024 -- The Moon & Uranus/The Golden Gate of the Ecliptic

Good evening fellow stargazers!

I'm thankful to report that here in my corner of South Carolina we've been blessed to have some clear skies overhead the last two evenings so that I can present to y'all some really good night sky photographs of our beautiful moon close to two beautiful heavenly bodies. 

The first photos were taken after sunset on the evening of Thursday, February 15th showing our lovely Luna meeting the distant giant planet, Uranus.

The first shot I took is the wide shot of the Moon -- just one day away from its First Quarter phase -- positioned between the giant planet, Jupiter, and the two open star clusters: The Hyades and The Pleiades (also known as the "Seven Sisters") that make up the Constellation Taurus The Bull. Uranus is positioned just next to the Moon in the night sky that evening. The second photo is a close up where y'all can faintly see the distant seventh planet of our Solar System.

 

Uranus may look small compared to Luna, but in actuality the blue-green gas giant planet is four times wider than our Earth and circles the Sun at a whopping 1.8 billion miles (or 2.9 billion kilometers) in its average orbit. It takes the light of the Sun about 2 hours and 45 minutes to reach Uranus.

At its present distance in our orbits around the Sun, Uranus is about 1.83 billion miles (or 2.94 billion km) away from Earth, which is just about 19.67 AUs.

The next set of photos I took were on the evening of Friday, February 16th when Luna -- now in her First Quarter Moon phase -- moved higher into the night sky and was positioned right next to the Pleiades in the sky inside The Golden Gate of the Ecliptic. This is the place in the sky dome where the Ecliptic (the orbital plain of the Earth around the Sun) passes between the Hyades and Pleiades with both the star clusters represent the "posts" of the virtual gate that makes up this asterism.

The first two photos are close-up shots with the first showing the details of the Moon in her First Quarter Phase, and the second is a wonderful capture showing Luna and the Seven Sisters meeting in the night sky.

The third is a wide shot of the major stars of the Constellations Orion The Hunter and Taurus The Bull showing Luna inside the Hyades and Pleiades "gates" -- note the positions of Uranus and Jupiter beneath the Moon. The final shot being a closer and more detailed shot of the Hyades and Pleiades with the Moon. All of which came out rather beautifully.

Well I hope y'all enjoyed my photographic offerings for the evening. I'm hopefully that we will continue to be blessed with clear skies enough to get at least two more interesting celestial views before the month of February is out.