A real treat for sky-, star-, moon- and planet-gazers took place on Sunday morning, July 19, 2009. These bodies met in the North/Northeast part of the sky on July 17, 18 and 19. The first two days were cloudy (I was up prior to 5:00 AM on all three days!). Persistency certainly paid off as I caught an excellent view on the 19th.
The Moon, Venus, Aldebaran (of the Constellation Taurus) and Mars!
The same photo now labelled so you can see what is what. Note: the helium star Aldebaran is 44.2 TIMES the diameter of our Sun (and you thought the Sun was huge!?)!!!
Another shot. Look at the clouds - very nice.
Notice the sky changing color ... this was taken only three minutes after the previous one!
If I am not mistaken, it appears as if the Planet Jupiter stopped by for a visit as well! Looking South.
Jupiter wanted to witness the meeting of the other four too!
At this point, only the Crescent Moon and Venus remained in the North.
Since I am on the topic of Mars, I thought that I would take my Meteorite Collection out and show a sample from it! Here is a very small fragment of the Red Planet (the Martian specimen is classified as NWA 4880: Achondrite: Shergottite). It floated in outer space for a while and landed on Earth in 2007.
Here I am showing some tiny fragments of the Moon too! Found in April 2002. Lunar Meteorite Classification - NEA001: Achondrite: Anorth.
I look to post much more from this area of observation and collecting in the coming months!
