Parade of planets, part one

"This looks like a good spot.  I'll put our chairs down right here. This is where we'll watch the parade from." 

The very special parade I'm talking about is going to be crossing the northeast sky here in New Zealand.  It would be the southeast in the Northern Hemisphere, and probably at a different angle as well.  No marching bands or floats in this parade though; instead, we have planets, and sometimes the moon. 

I'm on our balcony and it's somewhere around 6 a.m. on March 19, 2022.  Venus is the brightest planet that you see in the picture just below and above it at about 1 o'clock is Mars. Below the fronds of the palm, at about 5 o'clock, is Saturn.  

My post is going to cover these planets for a couple of weeks. They are going to move around up there, and the Moon as I said, is going to make an appearance, and who knows, maybe we'll see something else that is interesting. Jupiter will join the parade but not for some time. 

I would suggest that you look at these posts and pictures at a time when the room around you is not brightly lit.  The planets are hard to see in some of the shots and low ambient lighting will allow you to see them better.   

This is several days later, March 26.  Notice that Saturn is moving up, closer to Venus.  

This is a close up of Venus. As you can see, it is not completely round, it has phases just like the moon does, but they last for a much longer time than the Moon's.  

And just in case you wonder if that really is Saturn, this should prove that it is.  I also took this picture on March 26th.

I haven't been able to get a good close up of Mars yet. Yes, it is a lot closer to us than Saturn is, but it is currently as far away from us as it ever gets, and is therefore dimmer than usual. And, it's tiny compared to Saturn. I may be able to get some good shots of it in several months time.  

Look what showed up on March 29th. Yes, the Moon.

Throughout this series of photos, I've been having a hard time with the levels of humidity in the atmosphere. You can see the effect it has on the Moon especially.  

Notice too that Saturn has just passed Venus.  Not the perfect conjunction moment, but close. 

Mars stays on top.  

This is a shot of the Moon I took just after I took the photo above.  It's not very good.  

This is a shot of the Moon I took a few months ago when the air was much drier. Not as dry as I would like, but better.  Quite a difference, huh?

Let's go back to my balcony shots. I like the palms in the foreground.  You can also see here how close we are to sunrise.  

I got a surprise in this next picture. You'll notice first of all that Saturn has moved up again. The surprise is above and to the right of Mars.  The thin streak you see is I think, a satellite.  It is not the International Space Station this time. 

Some of you may remember that one of my pictures of Jupiter and its four Galilean Moons was enhanced when a fly-by of the International Space Station happened just as I clicked. I went back to the site that lists each time the I.S.S. flies over N.Z. and found that it was not over us the morning that I took this picture.  It must be another, but I haven't been able to figure out what it is yet.  

Here is a closer look. Same picture, zoomed in. 

This photo was taken several seconds after the one above. You can see that the streak is farther away.  

Our good friends Kim and Mike share an interest in astronomy. Yesterday, Kim raised a really interesting possibility when she saw this streak.  She told me about Comet 22P/Kopff that appears currently in the constellation Capricornus. She included the link to The Sky, Live, and I learned a little more about it.  

These planets are also in Capricorn right now, so it is possible that the Comet is up there among them, so to speak, if we could just find it. It sounds as though I would need a telescope to see it. My camera is not quite up to it. 

She's been watching the skies too lately, and got some pictures of these planets, but from the Northern Hemisphere.  What a blast it is to discuss, share and compare thoughts.  Thanks Kim and Mike. 

Same image, close up.  You can definitely see the red of Mars in this one. 

I'll end this first part of the parade here.  

Y'all come on back here next week for part two.   -djf