Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Moon, Venus & Jupiter

I have read an article about this last week, and I thought it was pretty cool, so read on and you will see the rest of my story down below:

From : http://www.earthsky.org/skywatching
Last Sunday, Venus and Jupiter were in conjunction. That means they were near each other and aligned north-to-south on the sky’s dome.
But these blazing beauties will appear almost as close together this evening. Be sure to catch them to the lower right of the
waxing crescent moon at early evening, because Venus and Jupiter will set about 3 hours after sunset.
Venus and Jupiter aren’t really near one another at all, of course, but only happen to reside along the same line of sight now as seen from Earth. Jupiter lies almost 6 times farther away than Venus does. Venus, the 2nd planet outward from the sun, circles the sun inside of Earth’s orbit. Jupiter, the 5th planet outward from the sun, circles the sun outside of Earth’s orbit. If you find that tough to visualize when you gaze at these planets in the evening twilight, don’t worry. You’re not alone!
Now for some astronomical nomenclature. Mercury and Venus lie inside of the Earth’s orbit, so they’re referred to as inferior planets. The planets Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune reside outside of Earth’s orbit and are called superior planets. Yet, the term inferior planet is not synonymous with inner planet. Nor is superior planet synonymous with outer planet.
The inner planets – Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars – are the 4 rocky worlds that reside in between the sun and the
asteroid belt. The 4 outer planets beyond the asteroid belt are the much larger gas giant worlds Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
Written by
Bruce McClure , 2 December 08


Well, this afternoon after coming back from music class with the kids, I saw exactly what they were talking about on this article. Needless to say that I went as soon as I got inside on my patio set up my tripod and my camera and waited hoping to have a good picture!! I had a few, here they are! Enjoy!!




2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That is absolutely amazing! I wish I would have caught that! Gorgeous! I love it. So amazing.

GypsyDi said...

Cool! So glad you took the time to take some pics.