~ Conjunction of the Moon, Jupiter and Saturn ~
I was extremely lucky to have three clear evenings to capture the conjunction of the waxing gibbous Moon travelling through the constellation of Sagittarius to meet with the two gas giant planets Jupiter and Saturn. This event happened on the evenings of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd of August 2020.
This event is quite rare as Jupiter and Saturn are only seen close together on the ecliptic every twenty years as they orbit about the Sun. To have all three celestial bodies in the same constellation, well that’s just awesome J
You’ll have another wonderful opportunity to see it all again on the evenings of the 24th, 25th & 26th of September with the waxing gibbous Moon.
All images were taken with a Canon 70D camera and an 18-400mm Tamron lens on a tripod in my garden just before 6pm. I had a bit of trouble selecting exposure times because the Moon was so bright and also a light twilight sky.
1st Image taken 1st August 2020: ISO640, exposure time 3.2sec at F5.6.
2nd Image taken 2nd August 2020: ISO640, exposure time 2 sec at f6.3.
3rd Image taken 3rd August 2020: ISO400, exposure time 2sec at f7.
It’s also interesting to note from the photographs at how much the Moon moves through the sky over the three nights, the Moon orbits the earth and the earth is also in movement orbiting the Sun.
The Moon rises 50 minutes later each night because of this movement.
I found an interesting answer to my question on how fast does the Moon move in its orbit around the Earth from Robert Frost an Instructor and Flight controller at NASA who writes a weekly Quora blog.
This event is quite rare as Jupiter and Saturn are only seen close together on the ecliptic every twenty years as they orbit about the Sun. To have all three celestial bodies in the same constellation, well that’s just awesome J
You’ll have another wonderful opportunity to see it all again on the evenings of the 24th, 25th & 26th of September with the waxing gibbous Moon.
All images were taken with a Canon 70D camera and an 18-400mm Tamron lens on a tripod in my garden just before 6pm. I had a bit of trouble selecting exposure times because the Moon was so bright and also a light twilight sky.
1st Image taken 1st August 2020: ISO640, exposure time 3.2sec at F5.6.
2nd Image taken 2nd August 2020: ISO640, exposure time 2 sec at f6.3.
3rd Image taken 3rd August 2020: ISO400, exposure time 2sec at f7.
It’s also interesting to note from the photographs at how much the Moon moves through the sky over the three nights, the Moon orbits the earth and the earth is also in movement orbiting the Sun.
The Moon rises 50 minutes later each night because of this movement.
I found an interesting answer to my question on how fast does the Moon move in its orbit around the Earth from Robert Frost an Instructor and Flight controller at NASA who writes a weekly Quora blog.
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