Greetings & Salutations, fellow amateur stargazers!
I stayed awake pretty late yesterday evening to capture some really good photos of the Moon with the Pleiades Star Cluster (also known as the "Seven Sisters") and the very faint distant planet, Uranus, in a near triangle in the eastern sky just above the treetops.
Uranus, the 7th planet in our Solar System, is currently 1.78 billion miles (or 2.86 billion kilometers) from Earth and you really have to know where to look to spot it. Even then it only appears faintly through a good pair of binoculars, or a telescope. I was fortunate enough to catch Uranus in the close-up photo of the three heavenly bodies. In my other photos I marked the approximate place Uranus sits.
In my second photo is a close-up shot of Luna with the
Pleiades where I was able to capture all of the major stars of the Seven
Sisters cluster and many of their companion stars. This one came out beautifully with the Pleiades just past the bright glare of the Moon.
In my wider shots, I captured most of the nearby major stars of the Constellations: Taurus The Bull, Auriga The Charioteer, and Perseus The Hero. I caught the more open Hyades Star Cluster (the "head" of Taurus) just above the trees -- y'all can see the reddish tint of the red giant star, Aldebaran.
I labeled all the major stars of each constellation, as well as outlined the constellations themselves to put them in relation to the current positions of the Moon and Uranus in the night sky.
If any of y'all want to try and locate Uranus for
yourselves, she will be close to the Pleiades for a good while since her
orbit around the Sun is slow -- it actually takes about 84 Earth years
for Uranus to complete a single orbit around the Sun!
Look for Uranus
about one degree (or the length of the tip of your pinky finger on your
outstretched arm) southeast of the Pleiades as they rise in the eastern
sky.
Another good opportunity to see all three of these
beautiful night sky features together again will come next month on the morning of
Friday, October 10th, when Luna will actually occult -- or cross
in front of -- the Pleiades. Uranus will still be relatively close and
should appear just outside of the Moon's glare.
I hope y'all enjoyed this post and as always keep your eyes to the night skies, y'all.
