Night Sky Photography -- 10-13-2024 -- Jupiter & Mars With Early Morning Winter Stars

Salutations once again, fellow stargazers!

Now that autumn here in North America is here, the morning skies overhead an hour before sunrise will begin to feature the stars and constellations of the Winter Circle, most of which will begin rising after about an hour before midnight the evening before.

Both the planets Mars and Jupiter can now be seen inside the Winter Circle with the Red Planet near the Constellation Gemini the Twins and Jupiter inside the Constellation Taurus the Bull.

Early this morning, I stepped outside and set up my tripod in the front yard, focusing my camera up at the two planets, as well as the brightest points of light near them, and took several very clear photographs. Because of the wonderfully clear morning sky overhead, I managed to capture not only our nearest planetary neighbors, but all the beautiful stars of four of the Winter Circle constellations -- as well as Sirius, the brightest star that can be seen from Earth.

In the first photo, I labeled both Mars and Jupiter, as well as all the major stars of the constellations around them and in the second I outlined the constellations themselves, including the location of the Winter Triangle asterism.

Looking up at those beautiful stars and planets in a clear autumn sky, its almost hard to imagine just how far away most of them are.

The closest of them, Mars, is actually over a hundred million miles from Earth at present and getting slightly closer as the planet moves in its orbit towards its opposition to Earth in January of 2025, and will appear to be getting even bigger in the early morning sky over the next couple of months. Even at its closest approach, Mars will only be about 60 million miles from Earth since this opposition puts the small planet will be near its aphelion, or the point farther away from the Sun in its orbit.

In my final photo of the post, I labeled not only the planets and the major stars and the location of the Orion Nebula, but I also added the exact distance from Earth to put into perspective just how massive our nearest galactic neighbors are. Also keep in mind most of those points of light that we see comes from light that took decades in most cases to reach our curious eyes.

With that in mind, I bid all of y'all a wonderful day. More evening photography will be coming soon, until then keep your eyes to the night skies, y'all hear.