The Moon, Jupiter and Mars

This post is a continuation of last week's. I want to now show you some photos that I consider 'bonus pictures.' My goal last week was to see Mercury and Matariki, and I did, but I discovered that the Moon, Jupiter and Mars were also offering me some 'not-to-be-missed' opportunities as well. I'm telling you, I get SO lucky sometimes. Talk about being at the right place at the right time. 

I hope that you enjoy seeing these.  

Here is a close-up of the Moon, taken on the 21st of June. Lots of nice craters. Given the high humidity we've had lately, I was surprised that this came out as focused as it did. 

It's the day after I took the previous picture and I'm up fairly early this morning. I won't start taking pictures of Venus, Mercury and Matariki for a while yet, they are still too low above the horizon, but look at what I see right now...

This is the Moon and Jupiter (and Mars down below), taken on the 22nd of June. Wow, they're so close to one another this morning. What an opportunity. (I wonder if I could get them together in one picture?) 

Picture 2

First, let's take a closer look at the moon on the 22nd of June.  

These first two close up photos of the Moon show how much the terminator line moves in one day.  

And then....

Get ready for this. Can you guess what's coming next?  I'll bet you've never seen this before!  

I was successful. They are together in one picture. This just amazes me...  

Our moon is about 238,000 miles away. Jupiter is 484 million miles away.  And here they are, in one frame, with Jupiter's four largest moons showing as well. I absolutely love it.  It astounds me that we are able to see such a sight.  The humidity was at 81%.  That's why the Moon has a halo around it. I used the 'Moon' setting on my camera which often gives a bluish tinge to the picture. The shutter speed setting was one second.  

Five Moon Sky

And, on the 23rd of June, I got another pleasant surprise.... 

Sorry about the ugly building under renovation, but it does show where they are in the sky. That is Jupiter up above and the Moon of course.  But.....where is Mars?  It was here yesterday.  

(If you go back up and look at picture 2 again, you'll see where Mars was yesterday.) 

Oh, there it is!

Let's go closer...

And a tiny bit closer yet.

I can't zoom in much farther, and still keep both the Moon/Mars and Jupiter in the picture, but I think I can see a tiny hint of one of Jupiter's moons. 

I tried to take a close-up of Jupiter alone, so that you could see where its moons are, but the 93% humidity wouldn't allow it. The camera would not focus despite trying three different settings.  

This is what I got when I cropped the image above to show only Jupiter.  

These last four photos show you the first and last shots that I took of Mars and how the Moon moved past it. These were taken on the 23rd. 

Mars is about 141 million miles distant. Its radius is only about 2,110 miles. For comparison, the earth's is 3,948 miles.  

These of the Moon and Mars are not as exciting as the Moon and Jupiter photo, but I still look with wonder at them.  

Since Covid has come, I have been traveling around Auckland much less.  I haven't been exploring the city, the suburbs, and beaches like I did years ago. My posts have been centered on my surroundings.  

However, every now and then the heavens turn me into an explorer of another sort.  The pictures in this post are proof of how far I will travel in search of a post for all of you.  

The picture of the Moon, and Jupiter and its moons, is my favorite of all of these I've shown you today. That's why I labeled it, Five Moon Sky. It almost sounds like a  title for a sci-fi story, doesn't it?

Hmmm.  I've always liked Isaac Asimov's story Nightfall, about a planet with multiple suns. Every two thousand years, all the suns set at once, the people see millions of stars in the sky and go crazy.    

What about a story of a planet with five moons that normally oppose one another in their orbits? Suppose that every few millennium all the moons line up and monstrous tides and seismic cataclysms result? Or, maybe...

I worked many years ago for a time as a 9-1-1 Dispatcher in Michigan.  One of the first questions I asked my experienced partner as I faced my very first eight-hour shift on a full-moon night, was if he felt that full moons affected some people adversely?  He said he certainly did believe that. On the average, he said that full moon nights were definitely busier.  

So what kind of shift would the dispatchers have had on my fictional planet if there were five moons piled up there some night? The mind boggles. What a story that could be. Maybe even better than the tides and quakes idea.  

Well, that's it for today. I hope you've enjoyed sharing my visual expeditions and day dreams.           

Encore: 

I slept in this morning, until nearly 6:40, and was greeted, when we pulled open the drapes, with the following sights.  

Look for the Moon. Center of the picture about 2/3rds of the way up. 

I have done no editing on any of the colors. 

A very faint Venus and the Moon.  Mercury is hidden now. 

  

It's hard to stop taking pictures when sights such as these are visible.  -djf