Night Sky Photography -- 12-07-2022 -- Mars At Opposition With The Full Cold Moon

Mars -- 4th planet of our Solar System.
Image courtesy of NASA.

Good evening, fellow stargazers!

Well folks, my night sky photos this evening showing the December Full Moon with the bright planet Mars in its direct opposition to Earth were taken in a partly to mostly cloud-covered sky just hours before foggy overnight conditions would have made it impossible.

To be honest, I was worried that nothing would show up given the denseness of the cloud cover. But thankfully with a little patience your favorite blogger was able to capture both our lovely Luna and little Mars together during breaks in the clouds and through lighter places where outlining the features on the lunar surface were captured better than they would have been without cloud cover at all.

The distance shots with the bare tree branches in the foreground turned out really well, but it was the close-ups that really showed Mars in all its bright red glory just below the Full Cold Moon -- the name of the December Full Moon in North America.

The following are the outstanding results, a couple of which show off Mars' bright reddish color standing out in the moon glare. A couple of the close-ups between the moving clouds give the appearance of Luna and Mars inside a beautiful aurora.

I hope y'all enjoyed my photos of the last full moon of 2022 and the opposition of Mars -- which unfortunately won't happen again for about 25 more months till January of 2025. Mars will remain one of the brightest objects in the night sky for a couple more months as it begins to move away in its orbit from Earth and dim in brightness.

Strange Visitors To My Backyard -- Eastern Turkey Vultures

Some really strange visitors appeared in the trees in my backyard earlier today. I noticed their shadows on the ground outside my kitchen window in the late afternoon sunshine. I grabbed my camera and went outside to find about 40, or so, Eastern Turkey Vultures either flying overhead, or perched on the trees in my neighbor's yard.

My feral outdoor cats were also watching them a bit cautiously, although none of them made any moves to land in the yard. 

One of three species in the genus Cathartes of the family Cathartidae, the Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura) is the most widespread of the New World Vultures that ranges in the Americas from Cape Horn on the most southern tip of South America to parts of southern Canada in the Northern Hemisphere. They can also be found in the Caribbean Islands and Cuba, where they are sometimes referred to as "carrion crows".

Here in the American Southland, these scavengers can be seen all-year-around hanging out in large groups in trees, or perched on tall power lines, or water towers -- any place they can rest when they aren't flying overhead looking for dead animal carcasses to feed on.

The scientific term, Cathartes, is the Greek word for "purifier," referring to these vultures' role as "cleansers" that consume decomposing corpses in nature. In fact they do such an amazing job that a good sized family of these birds can strip large dead animal carcasses like cows and deer down to the bones in just about under a day.

Most birds are believed to have a very poor sense of smell, but the Turkey Vulture is an exception. This bird can find carrion by odor, as well as their great eyesight. What they don't have is a syrinx -- the vocal organ of birds -- so its only vocalizations are grunts or low hisses. They also have a wingspan of between five to six feet in length.

Although my cats were apprehensive, there was little reason for them to worry. Turkey Vultures rarely feed on living things -- although they will occasionally go for live insects and live fish in drying-up ponds and streams. These scavengers feed mainly on dead animals, preferably recently freshly dead carrion. They will also occasionally feed on decaying vegetables and raid open trash dumpsters.

Not to be confused with their cousins, the Black Vulture (Coragyps atratus) -- which are also common in my part of Dixie -- the Turkey Vulture has bald, red heads with black feathers. The Turkey Vulture also has white feathers underneath their wings, giving them a sort of primitive beauty when flying overhead. The juveniles will have darker red heads than full adults, but their heads eventually turn the bright red color as well.

Although they appear intimidating, these birds are usually not dangerous to humans, but approaching them is usually not a good idea. These animals will regurgitate (aka throw up) on you as a defense mechanism....Yuck! So best to leave them alone and let them do the job that nature designed them for.

The following are the picture I took of this particular family group of Eastern Turkey Vultures.

A dark-headed juvenile Eastern Turkey Vulture.

Night Sky Photography -- 12-01-2022 -- The Moon & Jupiter With Galilean Moons

Good evening fellow stargazers!

Earlier this evening a couple hours after sunset, I was able to capture the Waxing Gibbous Moon and Jupiter, along with the four visible moons of the largest planet in our Solar System. The photos came out beautifully and captured all of the heavenly bodies perfectly.

The largest planet of our solar system, Jupiter, has about 80 known moons in total. Of these about 57 are officially named with the further 23 awaiting confirmation and naming by the International Astronomical Union.

These moons orbiting Jupiter form a satellite system which is called the Jovian System.

The largest of these moons are the four Galilean moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, which were independently discovered on January 8, 1610 by European astronomers Galileo Galilei and Simon Marius and were the first celestial objects found to orbit a body that was neither the Earth or the Sun.

A composite image of photographs of the four Galilean Moons shows (from left to right):
Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.
Image courtesy of NASA/JPL/DLR.

The four Galilean Moons are Jupiter's inner moons with regular orbits, while the rest of the smaller outer moons are on irregular orbits. The Galileans are also round moons, while the other Jovians have irregular shapes -- some of them possibly captured asteroids rather than true moons.

All the other smaller Jovian moons measure at less than 160 miles (250 kilometers) in diameter, with about 60 of the smaller satellites measuring less than 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) in diameter making them virtually invisible from the surface of the Earth even with a good telescope.  

Io is the innermost Galilean moon with a diameter of 2,260 miles (3,640 km) and a rotation period of 1.8 days around Jupiter at a distance of 262,200 miles (422,000 kilometers).

Europa is the smallest of the Galilean moons with a diameter of 1,940 miles (3,100 km) and a rotation period of 3.6 days around Jupiter at a distance of 417,000 miles (671,000 kilometers).

Ganymede is the largest of the Galilean moons, and the largest moon in the Solar System with a diameter of 3,270 miles (5,260 kilometers) and a rotation of 7.2 days around Jupiter at a distance of 665,000 miles (1,070,000 kilometers).

Callisto is the outermost of the Galilean moons, and the second largest moon of Jupiter with a diameter of 2,995 miles (4,820 km) and a rotation period of 16.7 days around Jupiter at a distance of 1,170,000 miles (1,883,000 kilometers).

With a good camera lens, a telescope, or a pair of good binoculars its possible to view these moons if you know where and when to look for them. To help identify the exact locations of the Galilean Moons, this blogger uses the outstanding astronomy website skyandtelescope.org as a reference source. I highly recommend this site to other amateur stargazers.

Night Sky Photography -- 11-29-2022 -- Mars Closest To The Earth Before Opposition

Good even fellow stargazers!

About every 26 months, our closest neighboring planet, Mars, reaches its opposition to Earth -- the moment that Earth is directly between a planet and the Sun. This also puts the Red Planet closer to our Earth in its orbit, making it glow slightly brighter as it approaches.

On the evening of Tuesday, November 29th and early morning of Wednesday, November 30th, Mars was at its closest to the Earth during this transition towards opposition. At its closest approach this year, Mars was about 51 million miles (or 4.5 light-minutes) from the Earth.

Right now Mars is slightly brighter now than Sirius, the night sky’s brightest star, and it’s noticeably red-orange in color. Mars will continue to increase in brightness until its opposition on the night of December 7th - 8th, then will begin fading by the end of the month.

Mars is currently located inside the Constellation Taurus The Bull and will be for most of this month. Aldebaran, the brightest star of Taurus (also known as the "Eye of the Bull") also shares a slightly reddish color, meaning that there are two bright red evening "stars" in our night sky this month.

The following are the photos I took of Mars at its current location in the night sky compared to the brightest stars near it, as well as the Constellations Orion The Hunter and Taurus The Bull.

Hopefully I'll be able to capture a good image of our little red neighbor the night of its opposition, which won't occur again for another 26 months in January of 2025.

Gamecocks Win The 2022 Palmetto Bowl -- FINALLY!

For the first time since 2013, the South Carolina Gamecocks beat their NCAA football rivals, the Clemson Tigers -- nationally ranked No. 8 in the country -- 31-30 at Memorial Stadium (aka Death Valley) in Clemson, South Carolina on Saturday, November 26, 2022, ending an eight year losing streak in the two school's annual rivalry game (nicknamed the Palmetto Bowl).

Needless to say, as a life-long American college football fan, and a diehard fan of the team my Grandfather Billy (God rest his soul!) got me interested in as a young kid, I was more than happy to witness this victory for my favorite college football team over their nationally ranked interstate rival.

Congratulations University of South Carolina and to your football players for a wonderful game and even better win that was a long time coming! Go Cocks!