Planetary Photography -- 09-09-2022 -- Full Harvest Moon With Planets & Mars With Taurus and Auriga Rising

Good evening, fellow stargazers!

Well folks, autumn is only a few weeks away. Summer here in South Carolina is beginning to wind down, although the humidity will likely be sticking around for at least another month -- possibly till just after Halloween into November.

About an hour after midnight on Friday, September 9th, I was able to capture some really good photos of the Full Harvest Moon -- the name given to the Full Moon in September here in North America in relation to the coming autumn harvest season.

The Full Harvest Moon can be seen in my first photograph taken between the two large gas giant planets, Jupiter and Saturn. The second photo is a close-up of the Harvest Moon as it appears to us from the surface of the Earth.

Just above the tree line to the south between the planets and Luna, you can easily spot Fomalhaut, one of the brightest stars in the night sky (the third-brightest as seen from Earth), forming a sort of inverted triangle in the southeastern sky.

Looking towards the eastern sky, also just above the tree line, Mars can still be seen close to the bright red giant star, Aldebaran -- the Eye of Taurus the Bull.

In my last two photos, I captured Mars as it appears now between Aldebaran and the Pleiades Star Cluster. Mars currently sits just inside the Constellation Taurus the Bull and will remain so throughout the month of September.

The bright star, Capella, can be seen just to the side forming a triangle in the eastern sky. Capella is the brightest star of the Constellation Auriga the Charioteer.

In my final photo I outlined the major stars of the Constellations Taurus and Auriga in their relation with the "Seven Sisters" and Mars rising in the eastern sky.

All of these photos were taken an hour after midnight. If y'all are able to stay up another hour, or so, the bright stars of the Constellation Orion the Hunter will also appear above the horizon as the winter constellations will being to reappear overhead in the sky dome.

Y'all might also notice that Mars is getting brighter in the sky as our Earth is moving closer to opposition with the Red Planet -- the point where Earth will be between Mars and the Sun, which will take place on Thursday, December 8th of this year. Given the distances and the orbits of our two worlds, Mars only reaches opposition to the Earth every 26 months, or so.

Once again I hope y'all enjoyed my night time photography. If y'all live in the Northern Hemisphere, be sure to check out the visible planets of our Solar System this month.

Night Sky Photography -- 12-24-2021 -- Planets With Comet Leonard In Southwestern Sky On Christmas Day!

Good Evening & Merry Christmas 2021, Y'all!

This evening, following the traditional family gathering, I journeyed out to the nearby baseball field to capture a Christmas Day photo of the three planets, Venus, Saturn, & Jupiter lined up in the southwestern evening sky an hour after sunset.

In addition to the planets, and the bright stars Fomalhaut and Altair, I was just barely able to capture the nearby nucleus of the Comet Leonard (C/2021 A1) just above the horizon.

Comet Leonard last passed by our planet about 80,000 years ago and made its closest approach to Earth on Sunday, December 12, when it came within 21 million miles.

The comet was discovered on January 3rd of this year by astronomer Gregory J. Leonard of the Mount Lemmon Observatory near Tucson, Arizona. The comet will disappear forever as it travels even further into space after it passes by Earth and leaves our Solar System traveling at approximately 158,084 miles per hour -- or more than half the distance between our Earth and the Moon (238,900 miles).

If y'all would like to witness this once in a lifetime celestial event for yourself, then you're in luck. Comet Leonard will appear in the night sky in both hemispheres until the end of December. However, the comet's nucleus is not visible to the naked eye without the aid of a telescope, binoculars, or camera lens.

As you can see in the photo, I was barely able to capture the nucleus as it appears very light blue against the dusk. I could not capture the comet's tail properly with the lens I had unfortunately. All the same, I'm proud that I was able to get this shot for y'all.

I hope y'all enjoyed this evening's night sky offering, my little Christmas present for y'all. Have a wonderful Holiday Season and be sure to keep your eyes to the night skies, y'all hear!

Night Sky Photography -- 09-12-2021 -- The Red Star Antares & Formalhaut in the Southern Sky

Good evening fellow stargazers!

The summer of 2021 will soon be coming to a close here in the Northern Hemisphere with the arrival of the autumn equinox on Wednesday the 22nd later this month.

Here in my little corner of Dixie, the fireflies will soon disappear for the year -- as will all those loud Cicadas! -- and the sunshine will soon make way for earlier and earlier evening skies. The stars overhead in our sky dome will also change with the tilting of the Earth towards the winter constellations over the next few months.

The bright red star Antares, the summer star for the Northern Hemisphere, will continue to appear to move westward following the setting sun.

This evening Antares was close to our lovely Luna, still a day away from her first quarter phase, and I was able to capture a really good shot of this conjunction just above the tree line.

The 1st-magnitude star Antares is the brightest star in the Constellation Scorpius the Scorpion -- which unfortunately I was unable to capture being too low on the horizon at this time. Its also the fifteenth-brightest star in the night sky. Antares is often referred to as "the heart of the scorpion".

The name Antares itself means "The Rival of Ares" (the Greek name for their god of war, Mars for the Romans) because of the star's distinctive red coloring and the fact its noticeably brighter in the sky dome than Mars, except for those times ever two years when the Red Planet is in close opposition to the Earth. In actuality, Mars is actually more of an orange-yellow glow, while Antares is always quite red as you can see in the photo.

Antares is a red supergiant star approximately 604 light-years from our Sun. In terms of size, Antares is about 700 times larger than our own star and about 9,000 times brighter. So big that if Antares replaced our own Sun in our Solar System, it would engulf all of the inner planets and the asteroid belt!

Yet, despite this massive size, Antares is relatively cooler than our sun. Our bright star burns as a whopping 11,000 F while Antares is somewhere around 6,500 F -- still pretty hot, but cool as far as stars go. This lower temperature is what gives Antares its distinctive red coloring.

While Antares appears as a single star when viewed with the naked eye, but it is actually a binary star, with its two components called Scorpii A and Scorpii B. The brighter of the pair is the red supergiant itself, while the fainter is a hot main sequence star.

A couple of hours later into the evening I captured a bright trio in the southeast: the two gas giant planets Jupiter and Saturn, along with the bright white star Foralhaut.

Fomalhaut (Alpha Piscis Austrinus) is sometimes called the Loneliest Star because it’s the only bright star in a wide stretch of sky. It's also called the Autumn Star because it appears more clearly in the southern sky in the fall months in the Northern Hemisphere. Fomalhaut certainly can be considered to be the star that announces the arrival of fall in the Northern Hemisphere because it stands out in what is otherwise a rather empty region of the autumn sky.

The 18th brightest star in the night sky, Fomalhaut is part of the faint Constellation Piscis Austrinus, the Southern Fish. The name Fomalhaut derives from the Arabic Fum al Hut, meaning Mouth of the Fish.

Fomalhaut is a hot bluish-white star about 25 light-years away. It’s almost twice the mass and size of our Sun, but radiates at about 17 times the Sun’s energy. Fomalhaut itself is a young star, just 440 million years old. That’s in contrast to the estimated 5 billion years for our Sun. Because Fomalhaut is hotter and brighter than our Sun, it also has a shorter life span of somewhere around 1 billion years. Stars like our Sun have life spans of about 10 billion years.

Both Antares and Fomalhaut are considered to be two of the four key stars of the night sky, sometimes referred to as the Royal Stars, or the Celestial Guardians (or "archangel stars"): Antares as Uriel, the Watcher of the West; Aldebaran representing Michael, the Watcher of the East; Fomalhaut representing Gabriel, the Watcher of the South; and Regulus as Raphael, the Watcher of the North.

Well folks, I hope y'all enjoyed my photos and presentation. Please let me know in the comments below and, as always, have a wonderful Dixie Day and y'all keep your eyes to the night skies, ya hear!